RUSH

Responsive_University_Student_Housing: innovative solutions for socio-economic and urban regeneration of neighborhoods in Southern Italy

The R.U.S.H. research project investigates the issue of university residences, taking it as a potential activator of urban and socioeconomic regeneration processes in degraded and marginal contexts, with the aim of testing its results on the city of Taranto, taken as a representative pilot within the university system of Southern Italy.
Starting from the structural shortage of university residences in the Italian context and the related challenge launched by the PNRR, which envisages tripling the number of accommodation places by 2026, the research proposes a multi-scalar approach, which explores, in a multi-disciplinary key, the strategic nature of these infrastructures at urban, neighbourhood and building level, trying to identify innovative strategies and actions capable of transforming student housing into a proactive and virtuous component of the urban system.
The aim of the project is to develop a responsive support model aimed at the creation of a potential service hub which, in seeking to respond to the needs of the complex university reality in Apulia, may be adaptable and replicable in other contexts in Southern Italy, through the parameterisation of qualitative-quantitative factors to be identified as key elements, for the definition of possible new urban ecosystems.