Urban planning - Urban history - European city building process - Urban renewal - Urban regeneration - Large-scale property - Heritage

Federico Camerin

AREA RESEARCH GROUP INSTITUTE
Urban and Territorial Planning Area Research Group in Architecture, Urban Planning and Sustainability GIAU+S
My research career

Architect-urban planner at the Università Iuav di Venezia (2014), I was a researcher in 2014-15 and 2016-17 at the same University through two annual research grants in urbanism. In 2020 I obtained the double degree of Doctor of Architecture (University of Valladolid) and Ph.D. (Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany) in the framework of the European project Horizon-2020 "urbanHist". In 2021 I was a postdoctoral researcher in urbanism at Iuav with a stay at the University Institute of Urbanistics (UVa) and I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in the framework of the Spanish national programme "Margarita Salas".

My scientific contributions have formulated integrated proposals for analysis and intervention, both from Urban and Territorial Planning and from the new strategic instruments, of urban "renovation" and "regeneration" operations in Spain and Italy. I have contributed to the generation of knowledge and ideas in the Area of knowledge of Urban and Territorial Planning (AUOT) through continuity and coherence in the research work, where a specific object of study is maintained, but where a generalisable understanding of the question of urban regeneration applied to large institutional land parcels is sought. The scientific and technical skills acquired, including the use of analytical tools, new technologies and planning and design criteria, have allowed me to achieve a high degree of autonomy, leadership and transdisciplinarity to channel research in AUOT and acquire an interdisciplinary perspective in which fields of knowledge such as architecture, geography, law, history and economics are involved. Among my contributions to society, I have been invited by City Councils, public entities and networks of agents to take part in specific public events, which served as scientific support for the decisions to be taken by policy makers in terms of territorial governance and dissemination to the general public.

My research

The rationale of the research project "Urban Regeneration as a new version of Urban Renewal Programmes. Achievements and failures", starts from the question that urban "renovation" and "regeneration" constitute two variables of the same process linked to the spatial transformation of Spanish cities that is recurrent from the 19th century to the present day, a process that has manifested itself in different phases ("renovation" from the 19th century to the mid-20th century, the United States being the frame of reference for the most virulent urban renewal after 1945; "regeneration" from the end of the 20th century), as a response to the interests of real estate-financial capital in its urbanistic aspect. Although they are different processes, both practices are presented as necessary "surgeries" in an attempt to recompose urban environments that have ceased to be profitable, even if they were essential, in order to proceed with interventions whose final results contrast with those that refer to their immediate past. There is no hesitation, however, in characterising them as "recuperative actions" even if they dispense with the legacies of a past in order to achieve their objectives.

My vision is to deepen and apply the knowledge acquired in my pre-doctoral and post-doctoral training process, especially at the University Institute of Urban Planning, and to demonstrate that the processes of "urban regeneration" currently underway in European cities are a variation on those first "urban renovations" undertaken in the USA from the late 1940s onwards. I want to be a reference point in the field of "urban regeneration" and pave the way to contextualise concrete proposals to guide regeneration operations to address existing environmental, social and urban inequalities, thus enabling local sustainability, promoting urban resilience and fostering the long-term well-being of local communities.