AT THE GATES OF THE PALE MOUNTAINS. Rosengarten Masterplan

The Rosengarten Master Plan (RMP) is a plan-project that applies the principles of the Landscape Approach to the planning of mountain areas, and deals with the redevelopment of high-altitude settlements at a landscape scale.
The planning area is Vajolet valley, at the entrance of the Dolomite Group of Rosengarten, part of the Dolomites World Heritage. The interventions - directed to the recovery of the cultural landscape and to the reinterpretation of the original matrices of the settlements (vìles) – aim to make environmentally compatible the present mass tourism activities and confer new meanings upon one of the most famous mountain landscapes in the world. For this reason, although in a mountain area, the plan deals with urban themes as: mobility, quality of public spaces, efficiency of technological networks, promotion of renewable energies, municipal solid waste management. At the same time, linking landscape and local community, the Plan interprets these urban themes in a mountain-oriented way.
Expected result is a support instrument to the development of settlement patterns intended for a sustainable and responsible tourism, based on the enhancement of identity contents of the local culture (Ladin minority language).

The plan sets itself into the planning frameworks defined by the Provincial Territorial Plan of the Trentino and the Spatial Plan of Val di Fassa Community but links the existing regulatory tools in an original way to build an innovative scenario of territorial regeneration.
The exceptional beauty of the valley is widely acclaimed, upheld by thousands of people from all over the world who visit it every year, both in summer and winter. Nevertheless the popularity of the area is also its main enemy. It involves an urban style “invasion” into the high altitude spaces, used as an urban park with spaces created for free time and leisure. This causes a progressive wear and tear of localities, not only physical but particularly in their significance.
The substitution of a rural Alpine culture – intimately connected with these sites – with a tourist–entrepreneurial society, which refers to a global economic system, has led to a trivialisation of customs, an impoverishment of meaning and thus a general deterioration of these areas. Faced with consistent economic investments, mostly for the superimposition of the new usage of the land (structures for skiing and high altitude facilities), a parallel cultural investment to integrate the new economy with the pre-existing one is lacking. The Rosengarten Masterplan aims to do this integration.

The plan rests on four pillars.

1) Adaptive Planning (= gradually adapt the previsions according to the Plan effects) with:
- Introduction of a five-year monitoring program (integrated sustainability evaluation) as an instrument checks periodically the effectiveness of the Plan.

2) Integration of ecosystem services:
- Definition of a volumetric incentive system, proportional to the different types of requalification, to increase the environmental performance of buildings (limitation of natural resource consumption, reduced emissions into the atmosphere, use of renewable energies).

3) Resilience of settlements:
- Introduction of area services and landscaping equipment to enhance the carrying capacity;
- Interventions to increase the landscape values and the architectural quality of public spaces;
- Controlled transfer of existing building volumes in order to recover some degraded situations.

4) Participatory process:
- Formation of the Plan through the involvement of all stakeholders of the area: definition of the shared vision of sustainable development of large area - programme agreement called "Rosengarten Charter" - and delineation of the transformation procedures (40 board meetings and 50 bilateral) ;
- Introduction of public-private planning agreements for the equitable sharing of benefits and social and environmental (costs) of the planning choices.

Plan data:
- Surface: 33 ha;
- Settlements: 6 housing clusters (altitude range 2000-2700 m / asl);
- Volumes: 18,000 cubic meters (36 buildings and 6 minor constructions);
- Central places: 5 aggregation poles.

Plan documents:
- 50 project sheets (one for each single building and collective spaces);
- plans: 1 plan scale 1:5.000 and 16 plans scale 1:1.000;
- 7 reports (2 technical and 5 evaluations);
- 3D land model to control the settlements and landscape transformations (video).