Da Parco-città a Città-parco. Trame, interpretazioni, suggestioni

This volume, developed within the context of the studies for the Shared Landscape Charter, builds upon the reflections contained in *An Exploration of Monza’s Landscape and Territorial Contexts* (2014). The title *From Park-City to City-Park. Patterns, Interpretations, Suggestions aims to situate the content within a framework of reflection that explores the cultural and symbolic construction of the relationship between human settlements and the landscape. It is neither a compendium of case studies nor a technical manual; rather, it presents itself as a mosaic of perspectives, approaches, and interpretations that interweave historical memory with contemporary planning and outline scenarios for a possible future.
The choice of title—with its conceptual shift from “park-city” to “city-park”—is not merely a rhetorical device, but rather a critical and design-oriented program. The “park-city” formula evokes experiences that characterized the era of twentieth-century modernity, when the goal was to integrate green spaces into the compact urban fabric, according to planning models that draw their main references from the theories of Ebenezer Howard or the experiments of European and North American garden cities. The notion of the “park-city,” on the other hand, reverses this perspective and shifts the interpretive focus: it is no longer a matter of treating green space as an additional, complementary, or residual element, but rather of recognizing the city as an integral part of a broader ecological and landscape system. In this vision, the urban settlement is not conceived as a separate entity, set in opposition to an external natural environment, but as a component of a complex ecosystem, in which environmental, hydraulic, agricultural, and cultural relationships constitute the true supporting infrastructure.