The key space of the 21st century, the city, the place of creative innovation and continuous conflict, is now more than ever confronted with a plurality of pressures that threaten its survival conditions and meanings. The linear perspective of an unlimited growth without technical or economic limits, which has informed the design and planning of urban space in modernity, is now definitively impracticable, and processes ignored for too long now appear as unavoidable constraints towards the construction of alternative scenarios. The first signs of ongoing climate change, low-intensity ethnic and political conflicts, the spread of violence in a fluid and informal way, the economic crisis and the increase in inequalities, the emergence in the urban dialogue of the major players of sharing economy and low cost, the large-scale violent manifestation of ignored geological risks, data management and social control systems; they add to the global pandemic in delineating a present in which the ordinary tools of design appear inadequate to imagine even before directing the future. City under pressure is an invitation to dialogue in the search for spaces in which the limits of contemporary paradigms appear as well as its adaptation toolsto confront the sum of urban tensions. A rethinking of city-making can propose complex models, capable of giving asnwers to pressures, of giving ground to conflict, to propose responses to the challenges of today and tomorrow.

Urbicide Task Force is a research group established at Università Iuav di Venezia. Urbicide Task Force is an independent, no-profit think tank based in Venice that will provide a nonpartisan, open, and collaborative platform for research, design, knowledge sharing, and capacity building related to reconstruction strategies with specific regard to the MENA region. Urbicide Task Force’s mission is to carry out trans-disciplinary research that will investigate current conditions of the cities and territories affected by war and develop solutions for architecture, urban planning, technology, and management of the built environment. Urbicide Task Force aims to strengthen effective multistakeholder discourse, with local, regional, and global actors, and to develop a robust global network that shares a deep interest and commitment in the reconstruction of material environment and immaterial cultural heritage At the core of the Urbicide Task Force is independent and interdisciplinary research exploring both the opportunities and the challenges related to the reconstruction process; facilitate local and regional approaches to shaping and embracing emerging opportunities, and initiate and support cross-cultural multidisciplinary dialogues and collaborations. Urbicide Task Force tries to answer a central question: how can destroyed cities and territories reconstruct a future of sustainable peace through social cohesion, equality, and inclusion?

Climate Change is causing critical challenges to  both  the built and the natural environment. Its effects and future outlook consign to us the urgency to rethink the territories of humankind in order to overcome an otherwise destructive conflict. The Planning Climate Change Lab research centre, active since more than ten years, is now a reference point for research and practices at national and international level in climate-proof urban planning. The primary aim of the Planning Climate Change Lab is to focus on the challenges that characterise and will increasingly define urban, rural, mountain, coastal and maritime territories in the future, offering effective, practicable and replicable responses. The research projects concern experimentations applied in coordination with public and private bodies of very different scales and in many countries. All these research activities are characterized by the great value of the complexity of the investigated objects, and by practical and territorial transformation objectives. These investigations move in a scenario of climate change and scarcity of resources, pursuing approaches and perspectives aimed at resilience, sustainability and circularity. The theoretical and methodological evolution operates on several fronts, combining innovation in technology, analysis, process and design. The group involves world-renowned researchers and professors from different continents in an attempt to build a global reflection on climate-proofing as a driving approach to the plan and project. For this reason, the group promotes and supports the international exchange of researchers and students interested in these issues as the foundation of its actions. The Planning Climate Change Lab has produced and distributed hundreds of volumes, articles, guidelines, conferences, seminars and congresses to make the results of its research public and usable.