Odessa Green Rings. A New Green Infrastructure Between Two Urban Ports

The presented work is the result of the research conducted by UniGe’s GIC.lab on the city of Odessa in 2021 on the idea of creating a new urban green ring system to reconnect and regenerate the city. The inspiration for the research was the transformation of the city’s historic harbour into a new urban/tourist attraction and the construction of a new lagoon port on the southern border. Odessa and Ukraine have always been a multi-city laboratory. In the past, Odessa has been able to experiment and transform itself, sometimes leaving indelible marks on its territory, cutting off promontories or building residential geographies, often, however, without leaving any trace of the changes within, or even forgetting about them. In this sense, the theme of the relationship between port and city is enriched and, going beyond the concept of the banal reconversion of uses, invests the economic, social, and territorial levels of the city as a whole. Beyond its architecture, Odessa, as we have pointed out, has a particularly clear cityscape, with two large reticular grids at its origin: two large grids, arranged in an oblique configuration and facing north towards the Black Sea and west towards the river courses and internal marshes, constitute a virtual, multi-strand city (easily traversable and rethinkable through calmed traffic capable of combining road and cycle/pedestrian traffic) and perfectly support the major monumental sites (or simply the identity, as well as natural and unique spaces), which give the city character and personality (from its most sensual environments to its most popular neighbourhoods). The city has an immense set of lines, points, and green spaces (parks, gardens, internal or coastal areas) that, if conveniently enlarged, connected, and intertwined, allow a hidden but immanent Networks: New Words, New Maps, and New Strategies for the Landscapes of the Cluster scheme to emerge in embedded green rings, as in a great landscape-operational matryoshka, unique in the world, which would provide meaning, orientation, and structure to the entire city and to the various building and environmental measures.