storage building is vacant (illegally used as covered parking by the employees of the mall that enter cars from a tiny backdoor). On the other side Le Centurie shopping centre is today the successful mall. Its switch to entertaining centre attracts users from the whole federation for concerts, food tasting and other events. Moreover, it gathers people from the whole territory that only use it as a point to gather. Nevertheless, Le Centurie represents with its structure an old-style suburban shopping mall with a very rigid and fixed plan: events have to take place in the corridors, since 2012 many shops had to divide their space with other commercial activities because the commercial area exceeded their need, and most of the storage spaces are unused. Activities for electronic devices, decor and clothing are the ones affected the most by shopping online: the products displayed are mostly just to try and there is no need to have products stored. Moreover, Le Centurie is a closed-box system that fully relies on mechanical ventilation and lighting and is energetically wasteful. I reckon is important to keep both into account in the analysis of the territory as they represent in the same area two different stages of the shopping mall evolution.
The social issue In the Secchi-Viganò understanding of the dispersed city as an isotropic territory, the geographical and morphological layer of the 23
VIGANO’, Paola, The project of Isotropy, Rome, Officina, 2011.
Camposampierese becomes predominant.23 The homogeneity of the territory, accentuated by the modular division originated by the
centuriatio, becomes the main lens to look at it and intervene on it through the project.
Water and road networks create the same conditions, more or less, in all of the territories, whatever the direction and wherever the point of observation may be. […] The utopia of an isotropic organization appears in the character of this territory of dispersion. […] Starting from the waters, or from the diffused mobility network,
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