Presentation by Claudia Farone, Claudia Faraone, Post-Doctoral Researcher, IUAV University of Venice, Italy at the fifth meeting of the Spatial productivity Lab of the OECD Trento Centre held on 10 October 2019. More info http://oe.cd/SPL

1. 10 October 2019 – Venice, Italy
OECD Trento Centre for Local Development
OECD Spatial Productivity Lab Spatial productivity for regional and local development
5th meeting
Urban Regeneration, Economic Stimulation and Social Innovation in the Context of
Industrial Transitions: Insights from Porto Marghera (Venice)
Valentina Bonello, Claudia Faraone, Luca Nicoletto, Giulio Pedrini, Maria Chiara Tosi

2. Urban Regeneration Strategies, Economic Stimulation and Social Innovation
for an Urban/Industrial Territory in Transformation.
Mestre-Marghera Case Study
9-Months Research
Multi-disciplinary Approach: Urban Planning, Mobility Engineering, Applied Economics and Oral History
5 Researchers
Luca Nicoletto - Urban regeneration Strategies for the Mestre-Porto Marghera interface
Claudia Faraone - From stakeholders’ analysis to audio-visual storytelling of urban change
Giulia Gnola - Urban mobility planning
Giulio Pedrini - Economic Stimulation of an Urban/Industrial Area
Valentina Bonello - Social metamorphosis. From deindustrialisation to new labour patterns
5 Professors
Maria Chiara Tosi (coord.) - Iuav University of Venice
Michelangelo Savino - University of Padua
Agostino Cappelli - Iuav University of Venice
Francesca Gambarotto - University of Padua
Alessandro Casellato - Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
12 Partners (Institutions, Companies/Businesses)
Operative Partners: Sinergo SPA, FilmArt Studio, Terre srl, AI Architettura e Ingegneria,
ERF Esercizio Raccordi Ferroviari, CMD Consorzio Multimodale Darsena, Venice Heritage Tower,
EST - Educazione, Società, Territori, Loft Consulting
Architecture design and Civil Engineering Firms, Cinematographic
Network Partners: AUDIS Associazione Aree Urbane Dismesse, INU Istituto Nazionale di Urbanistica, ANCE Associazione Nazionale Costruttori Edili

3. 2000 ha
1400 ha industrial areas
120 ha logistics areas
841 firms
10498 workers

4. Research goals and methodology
Through a multi-disciplinary approach, our research presents a spatial analysis of the social
and economic transition of the interface area between Mestre and Marghera to provide a
comprehensive vision of the ongoing urban transformations and draw on possible
regeneration scenarios of this area based on new forms of agglomerations.
Descriptive analysis
Venice local system:
● evolution of the industrial structure 1991-2011 and 2012-2014: shift-and-share analysis,
agglomeration indicators (i.e. specialization and related/unrelated variety);
● evolution of the occupational (and constituent skills) composition 2004-2014;
Porto Marghera:
● Evolution of the industrial structure of Porto Marghera
● Geo-localization of firms currently located in the area;
Qualitative analysis
● Semi-structured interviews to a plurality of different actors operating in the area (20
interviews) > multi-stakeholder mapping
● Fieldwork analysis and scenario building with Planning and Urban Design university
ateliers and International Urban Design Competition

5. Transitions in Economic Structure and Production Spaces
The dismantling of the old manufacturing ecosystem
- integrated basic production cycles
- big productive compounds
- national policy driven
- national scale production
- highly specialized knowledge endowment
- negative externalities (environmental pollution)
- no relationship with the inland
- consequences of a domino effect
The traces of new urban micro-ecosystems
- KIBS, CCI, makers and social entreprises
- urban oriented activities
- flexible spaces - mixed uses
- urban fabric made of scraps/fragments
- multiscale: local, regional, national...
- discontinuous public policies
- market driven economy
- private entrepreneurship
- fragile system endangered by tourism specialization

6. Spatialization of traditional and emerging activities
Traditional Manufacturing
and Related Services
Logistic and Portual Areas
KIBS
Horeca
Public Services
Green Areas
Abandoned Areas

7. Transitions in Economic Structure
• Industrial Change >> Growth of KIBS
industry
• Lowering of firm’s average size,
drop in the number of employees 12,9
3,9
Marghera
Average company
size
Venice
Some big companies are still here: average company size in
manufacturing industries = 35 employees
employees per company
• Job transformation. New jobs requiring high
skilled workers

8. Transitions in Production Spaces
• A landscape of inertia and
abandonment
• Request for comfortable
everyday life spaces and
infrastructure enabling
interactions and relationship
• Multitude of actions not
coordinated by a
comprehensive general vision
- Remediation and
- Logistic oriented policies
Strategic and Territorial Plans
Urban Regeneration Programs

9. Marghera Traditional Sector
Traditional Socio-Cultural Activities
KIBS + Place-based Manufacture
NEW Socio-Cultural Services
HORECA
Stakeholders and Actors of Urban Change

10. Trace of Advanced Tertiary Ecosystem
(VEGA - VEnice GATEway Scientific Technologic Park)
Publicly-led Transformation Strengths
Strategic localization
In-between Venice and
Mestre/Marghera mainland
Connection to public
transport
Opportunities
Incubator environment
supporting start-ups
Exchanges and strong
relationship with Venice
cultural-based activities
Weaknesses
Public and urban spaces
low quality
Lack of Support from
Regional Politics and
Consequent Public Policies
Threats
Conflicting Visions
Inertia and slow public
urban transformation
process
For example, the Vega canteen... at the canteen you intercept
people coming from all over the world, it’s a various place where
there are people representatives of the various sectors of the
economy. There you can find the workers of the shipbuilding sector,
engineers, and software engineers, you can find drone experts and
other interesting figures, from manufacturing to advanced tertiary or
new digital economies and then this condition, of being a very large
canteen where there are hundreds of subjects, this has started new
collaborations…
Nicola Ianuale, Questlab Srl
In fact, Bricolage is the old term for Making. The Maker is nothing
but the Digitized Bricoleur, isn't he/she?! We know that man is used
to self-production... and there is the question of transition: now
everything is digitalized. We moved from atoms to bits while digital
technologies, 3D printing, CNC milling etc., have been allowing us to
get back, from the bits back again to the atoms, to actually regain
that physicality that lately has been virtualized somehow.
Leonidas Paterakis, FabLab VeneziaSrl

11. Tales from Marghera - Marghera City of Making https://youtu.be/HcvShX0mL94

12. Marghera City of Making
International Design Competition
Escola Tècnica Superior
d'Arquitectura Barcelona
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Oslo School of Architecture
and Design
Parsons The New school
Technische Universiteit Delft
Universidad Católica de Chile
Universidade de São Paulo
Université libre de Bruxelles
What will be the evolution of traditional manufacture activities?
What their relationships with urban space and places are going to be?
Which kind of relationships is going to happen among workers and between them and places?
Jury Members
Luca Battistella (Comune di Venezia),
Marco Bertozzi (IUAV), Thomas Chung
(City University Hong Kong), Juan Manuel
Palerm (ULPGC, Las Palmas de Gran
Canaria), Paola Viganò (IUAV-EPFL), Nans
Voron (Columbia University).

13. ULB - Université libre de Bruxelles
Interstices
Professors
Geoffrey Grulois, Marco Ranzato
Students
Octavio Pineiro, Davide Cauciello

14. AHO - Oslo
La Fabbrica della Biennale
Professors
Luis Callejas, Giambattista Zaccariotto, Erik Fenstad Langdalen, Thomas
McQuillan, Marianne Skjulhaug, Andrew David Morrison, Mattias
Josefsson, Ermioni Garramone, Biljana Nikolic, Christiana Pitsilidou
Students
Silvia Mihaela Deacon, Karlis Faunromans, Jhu Yin Hong, Siyin Pang, Milja
Tuomivaara, Paul Antoine Lucas

15. TU Delft
Infrastructural Ecologies
Professors
Taneha Kuzniecow Bacchin, Hamed Khosravi, Filippo Lafleur
Students
Aikaterina Myserli, Alexandra Farmazon

16. KU Leuven
Ecologies of Sharing
Professors
Bruno De Meulder, Kelly Shannon, Viviana D'Auria, Cecilia Furlan
Students
Angelica Palumbo, Georgina Truter, Hongxia Pu, Wossen Gebreyohannes,
Yu-Hsin Liu

17. Thanks for the attention!
fsemarghera@gmail.com