A piazza for Pedavena in the Belluno Dolomites: Towards recognition of an urban identity

The town of Pedavena is situated in the Province of Belluno not far from Venice and its redevelopment of the urban space of the piazza has been a particular subject of reflection by the local authority. The town of Pedavena was studied by a research group from the Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering at the University of Padua. Today the urban form of this small provincial Commune is the result of the fragmentary growth of the residential urban fabric that is arranged around a more or less compact central nucleus. The meeting space of the community is presented as a place unresolved in its form, lacking precise and definable limits and crossed by the main transit routes. The streets assume the centrality and significance that has to be given to a piazza as a place to be, stay and live. The planning experience of the research group is a valid example of designing liveable civil place by interpreting the city as a unitary fact where the piazza is a place with a clear and distinct form according to an idea of the city made of interconnected spaces, each one formally different but related in rich meaningful spatial sequences possessing the civil character of the urbs.