A “Stepping Stone” Approach to Exploiting Urban Density

Currently, there is an increasing need to use ecological-environmental strategies that can contribute to human well-being and biodiversity in urban contexts that are complex systems with an increasingly diverse demand for ecosystem services. This becomes important especially for areas with high urban density which are those that determine the greatest impacts. Recent studies have related the increase of the COVID-19 pandemic to urban density, and the results seem to converge on the hypothesis that the lack of availability of urban space and high population concen-tration are factors contributing to the spread of disease. However, density consti-tutes both a problem and an opportunity to creating open spaces on a human scale, favoring the development and articulation of spaces that can more easily creep in and create the necessary conditions both for functional and environmental improve-ment and for mending the built environment. A dense environment suggests to work according to new logics that, starting from the optimization of existing spaces able to provide ecosystem services, experiment especially the “micro” and “intercon-nected” formula. The issue of interconnection in cities is complex as the continuity of connections, necessary to ensure the reticularity of spaces, is often inhibited by urban density. The idea is to replace the “structural continuity” with a “functional continuity” according to the “stepping stones” approach, borrowed from the ecology of the landscape. In analogy to the ecological networks approach, therefore, it is proposed to use this logic to enhance existing open spaces and create new ones with the aim of implementing overall urban quality.