Autobiographic Considerations

Manuel Sola Morales, reading a recent essay of mine, wrote back to me expressing his appreciation of it since it was an "autobiographic consideration ". Manuel told me that perhaps the fifty years of my personal town planning experiences often bring me to compare past and present, to find reflections and hints for the future. Probably the town planning problem which I've been most in charge of has been that of the urban plan's model and of its fulfilment, of its relationship with the real estate system, the legislation and the territorial organization that follows a certain plan.
Since these are highly changing phenomena, it's natural for me to remember today, what these phenomena were when I first tried to answer them many years ago, proposing a certain type of plan and a certain legislation reform, always with the intention to affect the real estate system and the structure of the territory. I think it's natural for me to propose this "autobiographic" approach when I try to give my present-day reading of the same phenomemena that, in the meantime, have deeply changed.
Explaning how I suggest dealing with them today, with very different solutions; wanting to achieve the same targets of yesterday, which are equity, actuability and quality (even if the needs of quality change with time).
The results obtained in Bologna in the sixties and seventies are certainly "autobiographic", generalizing the precautionary acquisition of soil to urbanize, when this operation could be done, in Italy, at low cost. A comparison with the past, brings me to believe that, that town planning generation is concluded, and it makes me think of a new model plan and of a new legislative reform. "Autobiographic" is also remembering that twenty years ago the strategy of social transformation of the Madrid plan , wasn't alternative to the strategy of functional transformation of the Barcelona plan. Moreover the alternative "project vs plan" born out of the comparison between the two, was a trap which we fortunately surpassed with time.
Finally, it's, in a certain way, "autobiographic" for me to continue believing in and apply the method of the plan. It's because I continue comparing the plans deriving from the past situations which I well remember, to those which have originated in the present and which we can all see; always in order to obtain, thanks to this comparison, considerations and hints for the future.

• Reforme ou ideologie. le plan de rome vers la conclusion
Bologna, march 2006
French and Italian Download below

• My long way towards metropolization
Bologna, february2006
English and Italian download below

• L'urbanisme en Italie, avec un oeil sur la France
Nizza, 4 /3/2005
French and Italian Download below

• Una estrategia para el reequilibrio de las transformaciones territoriales
Barcelona, 8/9/2004
Spanish and Italian download below