Le residenze universitarie e il rapporto con la città

By comparing the data provided by the Eurostudent Report on the student living conditions inEurope it emerges that Italy ranks near the bottom as regards the number of accommodationplaces in residences for university students. Indeed, although a much higher demand, in Italyonly about 4% of students live in university residences.The housing condition of non-resident students enrolled at the University of Catania falls withinthat general reference framework. In the academic year 2014-2015, the Organization for theRight to University Study in Sicily (ERSU) offered housing services making available 698 bedsfor non-resident students enrolled at the University of Catania in view of the 1.754 students whowere eligible, satisfying only the 39% of them. If we consider that more of 50.000 students areenrolled at the University of Catania, estimating that at least 35% of them are non-residentstudents, we can consider that about 19.000 students are forced to turn to private market ofrental accommodation.The town of Catania must increase the number and the quality of housing supply for universitystudents, conceiving open structures over the city and offering multiple and flexible services,able to respond to the students housing needs. New structures should be inserted effectively inthe urban space, in pleasant environmental contexts and at the same time lively and dynamic,connected through soft mobility to the university spaces of teaching and research activities.The objective of the present research concerns the identification of areas where resultsfavourable to locate the university residences and services, starting from the available areasand/or disused buildings to recover within the urban area near the main locations of theteaching and research activities of the University of Catania. To this aim, a software GIS wasused which provided a classification of the areas and/or disused buildings and allowed toidentify the most suitable location for new university residences.One of the selected areas is located in the San Domenico quarter, in a consolidated urban andsaturated context by the city planning point of view. Among the disused buildings located in thatarea it was concluded that those before utilized as cinemas represent the building category bestsuited to be transformed in university residence. As case study, the recovery and rehabilitationof the cinema Minerva was proposed, focusing attention on collective functions to establish, inorder to make the university residence open towards the urban environment.