The opportunity to triple the number of housing places (p.a.) for off-campus students by 2026, promoted by the PNRR's Fourth Mission, appears strategic for southern university cities, also in light of the slowdown in the mobility of southern students to central-northern universities in FY 20/21.
By bringing together multidisciplinary technical and scientific expertise, the proponents of the RUSH research, representative of expertise on university housing, intend to bring Student Housing (SH) to fruition as an urban ecosystem i.e., infrastructure capable of providing temporary hospitality support and regenerating cities through facilities and opportunities for co-working, co-living, etc.
The aim of the research is to define a model of responsive support aimed at the creation of an innovative urban ecosystem for urban and socio-economic regeneration in the South of Italy potentially replicable and adaptable in other similar contexts. The model is developed through the study of the pilot case of the post-industrial city of Taranto, in Apulia, a region representative of the complex reality of Southern Italy, in order to study potentials and limitations, in terms of urban renewing, that SH can produce. Through an interscalar approach, the model aims to increase the number of pa and trigger a virtuous process of economic, social and environmental recovery and resilience, linking back to the research already implemented as part of the Puglia Regione Universitaria project: studying and living in welcoming and sustainable cities, created under a memorandum of understanding between the Puglia Region, A.Di.S.U. Puglia, the five university cities and universities in Puglia, with the scientific coordination of urban@it.
RUSH pursues the following macro-scale objectives:
1) urban (UdR_Poliba).
• Make Puglia's university cities more attractive and inclusive by assuming the ecosystem paradigm in urban regeneration processes.
• Limit the conditions that determine the creation of university movers to other regions and countries while attracting international users.
• Stabilize university movers by promoting hospitality support structures to foster synergistic models with the local context.
2) Neighborhood (UdR_UniFi).
• Foster systemic actions to expand the facilities network.
• Integrate multi-level design strategies, addressing the areas of energy, climate, waste, to achieve sustainability goals.
• Outline appropriate organizational models of hospitality based on integration with relevant context.
• Implement socio-economic growth to create better conditions for access to training and contain the NEET phenomenon.
3) of the building (UdR_PoliMi).
• Define new morpho-techno-typological models of SH, in terms of adaptability, environmental sustainability, building rehabilitation.
• Outline innovative solutions in terms of responsive SH for learning community.
• Identify smart services to support SH.
