Re-claiming the urban space: Urban Morphology, the crisis of Modernity and the regeneration of the city

Urban Morphology systematically reflects on urban phenomena, with
the aim of describing city formation and transformation over the time. Since the
end of the XIX century onward, in the western city we had been witnessing a
dramatic shift in perspective. Ought to the appearance of Modernity and its
ideological Project, the city form is not anymore regenerated, but mostly destroyed and substituted according to new principles, considered not compatible with the existing fabrics and infrastructures. Le Corbusier’s theory of the city clearly expresses the new strategy: the modern city is envisioned as a problem to be solved through the use of technology, intended as a value in itself, for the sake of the industrial civilization. This is an unprecedented change in the history of Urban Form. In fact technology had always been considered merely instrumental to the definition of a precise idea of the Public and not vice versa. Not by chance Urban Morphology starts, after the second world war, as an explicit reaction to that ideological background. The different proposals therefore reflect on the crisis of the pre-industrial city, highlighting its transformation and development to underline the cultural fracture prompted by Modernity. The new economicfinancial crisis we have been witnessing over the last years still claims for a radical revision of the Modern perspective, which seems not anymore compatible with the current condition. This paper intend to develop a reflection on Urban Morphology, in order to discover methodological devices supporting the urgent need for urban regeneration.