The cycle network as a soil project for urban resilience

Cycle network and stormwater management are two topics addressed separately. The first is seen as a contribution to slow mobility aimed, too often, to the realization of the greatest number of kilometers of cycle paths. The second is treated as an emergency to which, from time to time, an answer can be given to bring the situation back to normal in the shortest possible time. It is necessary to overcome separateness and imagine the cycle network as a soil project that can contribute to urban resilience. It is a perspective in which the soil is no longer just the support for the transit of bicycles, but takes on a thickness to become an environmental infrastructure. Boston, San Rafael, Zwolle and Copenhagen questioned how to transform water from a generating agent of risk conditions, into a strategic resource for urban resilience, also using the cycle network to contribute to a better collection and management of stormwater. And they worked on the network space, on the materials (porous asphalt, underground channels for the flow of water), on the space associated to the network with the Green Stormwater Infrastructures and on the contexts crossed by the cycle network and the relationships it establishes with the public space. The comparison makes possible to draw useful indications not only to overcome the logic of the sector that presides over the planning of the cycle paths in Italy but also to orient the morphological quality of the projects both in the realization of new cycle paths and in the restructuring of the existing ones.