Bologna, city of water: prospect for the valorization of water heritage

Bologna, like many other Italian areas, has lived for several decades a transition phase that has highlighted the need to define a new narrative of the city, that is the reposition in a context of global competition. To do so, necessarily, the city must redefine its relationship with the territory, which has impoverished over the centuries. This relationship has structured the Bologna area since the founding of the Via Aemilia and became vital in the Middle Ages, when the city's economic growth depended on the use of water as a motive power. Historically, hydraulic networks were then the links, functional and symbolic, between the city and the countryside and its important role is evidenced by the wealth of historical and cultural heritage. Even today, the ecological network can play this role of junction. For this to happen, however, it must be determined, in its environmental, landscape and historic features and re-functionalized on the basis of widely shared strategies. For the territorial nature of hydraulic networks, such reconfiguration can be implemented, in fact, only by means of regional planning that goes beyond the prescriptive dimension, by defining supra-local projects. In the Bologna area, this strategy could be tested through the enhancement of the river Reno, which, through the canal, feeds the system of the underground canals of Bologna. An integrated redevelopment of the two components, landscaping and historic, of the system could lead to recognise the quality of the fragile territory and rediscover the hydraulic and industrial history of the city, building a new image of it, attractive for tourists and, at the same time, with a strong character of identity.