Polignano a Mare (IT)

SITE / CONTEXT

Polignano a Mare, a town in Puglia, is located 33 km south of the coast of Bari. It is characterised by the magnificent location of its historic centre, which stands on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Adriatic Sea. Its wealth lies in tourism related to marine activities and agriculture.With an average of 250,000 visitors per year, the FEE, Foundation for Environmental Education, has awarded Polignano a Mare the Blue Flag since 2008 and it was named “Most welcoming city in the world 2023 at the Booking.com Traveller Re- view Awards”.The city hosts the “Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series” every year. Its territory is characterised by a landscape of considerable interest, both naturalistic - with its Lame (Lama Monachile is famous) and sea caves - and histo- rical with its ancient centre and the remains of Roman domination.
The city is served by two airports (Bari and Brindisi), the railway line, the A14 motorway and the Adriatic SS16. Its tourist attractiveness and urban conformation have stimulated an expansion of the territory along the direction of the coastline and within the SS16 connecting axis. But it has also developed inland beyond the railway line, which represents an important connecting infrastructure both at the metropolitan and tourist level.The crossing of the railway line consists of a number of vehicular subways, which need to be rethought in order to favour the connection of peripheral residential areas with the vital city centre and the sea.

CITY STRATEGIES

The city is promoting the regeneration of the urban system through the Preliminary Planning Document (P.D.R.U.) aimed at improving the urban, housing, socio-economic, environmental and cultural conditions of human settlements and also adopting intervention tools with the involvement of inhabitants and public and private stakeholders.Today the city must respond to new needs of the community that must deal with the activity of tourism by building new social, housing and service dynamics according to the principles of ecological transition, energy saving, inclusiveness. The challenge of EUROPAN is to offer new ideas for these areas with a high re-sourcing capacity.

QUESTIONS TO THE COMPETITORS

The site is defined within the framework of the collaboration between the City of Polignano and FS Sistemi Urbani (leader of the Urban Pole of the Gruppo Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane) for the urban regeneration of a number of compendiums no longer functional for railway operations and of possible future disposal.The areas are located in the area of the central station, a few minutes’ walk from the historic centre and Lama Monachile. An urban transformation is foreseen to create new public and private facilities and to give back to the community the nodal spaces of the city fabric. The redevelopment of the Villa Pinocchio playground is strategic with respect to the station areas, completing the system of connections that already includes the completion of some square improvement projects. The urban fabric of Polignano is strongly oriented towards sustainability due to the ease of creating an high-quality proximity context, by intervening on public spaces and safeguarding the landscape and local resources. Unused areas can respond to the need to combine tourist attractiveness, housing mix and services with attention to connections with urban and landscape systems. In accordance with the regional landscape plan of the Puglia Region, the project must safeguard the natural, morphological and historical-cultural characteristics of the landscape; ensure soil permeability and promote renaturalisa- tion processes, as well as introducing new functions to serve the community and local productivity.