BUILDING HORIZONTALITY? The Impact of Road Design Regulations on Urban Ecosystems

Based on a corpus of specific regulations, this paper seeks to investigate the processes by which modern roads are conceived and realized. Such critical reading can not only contribute to identify some of the main spatial characteristics of contemporary urban settlements , but also enables to understand better how small scale elements, such as infrastructural devices, impact upon environment, landscape and urban fabric at large scale. It helps to reveals how this particular regulatory regime (in)directly convey a more or less vertical/horizontal, integrated/fragmented conception of territories. In particular, revealing the legal base of the wide spatial/territorial footprint of the road allows to reflect upon a large amount of open spaces that can be re-considered both as surfaces for accessibility and sociability and as functional soils, that is to say as part of a living, three-dimensional integrated urban ecosystem.