Reconceiving urban planning strategies and cities after the big oil crisis of the 1970s: New challenges and the new mobility and ecology turn
Creators: name: Charitonidou, Marianna
name: Massimiliano, Savorra
name: Guido, Zucconi
Publisher: name: ETH Zurich
Year: 2022
Subjects: Urban history
oil crisis
ecology
new mobility turn
Urban sprawl
urban renewal

description: In 1973, after the big oil crisis both general public and experts were shocked after the decision taken by the OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) to increase oil price. Within this context, the expression “end of civilization” was used to refer to the idea of an unlimited growth. In 1972, a report entitled “The Limits to Growth” signed by a rather mysterious “Club of Rome” expressed some concerns about the exponential economic and population growth in front of a finite supply of resources. The aforementioned report was the outcome of a study that was based on a computer simulation, which was produced at MIT and aimed to examine the consequences of the interactions between earth and the human systems. A decade earlier, in the 1960s, Jane Jacobs, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities published in 1961 analysed urban sprawl and contemporary displacement from central to suburban areas. During the 1970s, after a first phase of disorientation if not even panic, there was a phase of a more reflective kind of reaction expressed through the declaration of a necessity to revise that model by limiting growth, in a large spectrum of sectors, running from national economies to urban settlements. In the meanwhile, the debates about urban planning had been affected by a new sensitiveness for built-up heritage and natural environment. 
The debates about urban planning during the 1970s were dominated by a tension between those who criticized strategies that characterised the post-war period, such as the strategies that supported “urban renewal” and “slum clearance”, and those who believed in “ecology” and the intention to achieve a balance in the interaction between humans and their natural environment. More recently, the notion of “new mobility” has acquitted an important place. The interest in this notion goes hand in hand with the intention to explore urban planning strategies that aim to contribute to a significant reduction in the use of individual car, and to an increase of the use of public transportation in our everyday life. The session welcomes papers that aim to reflect on these issues. Among the topics that could be treated are the following questions: 
•	Which has been the impact of this evolution vis-à-vis the 1973 oil crisis on how urban structure is interpreted?  
•	To what extent the choice of reutilizing the stock of buildings, as in the case of the 1974 plan of Bologna, was a real alternative after stopping the urban sprawl?
•	Which has been the impact of these transformations in urban planning strategies on housing?
•	To what extent the new models of urban planning that emerged from the 1970s until today achieved energy-saving? 
•	How the “new mobility turn” has conceptualised the reduction in the use of individual car and the increase of the use of public transportation?
•	How the ecological crisis is connected to the necessity to explore new ways of re-utilizing the patrimony of the past, and how new technologies such as augmented reality can contribute to this?