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URBAN ESSAYS
Ideas, observations and critical reflections on cities, ecology and everyday urban life.
Urban Essays is a curated collection of long-form articles and shorter visual notes developed through more than twenty years of work in urban design, master planning and landscape architecture between Europe and Southeast Asia.
Some pieces expand ideas first introduced on LinkedIn; others are original essays written specifically for this platform. Together, they explore how urban form, nature, climate, mobility and public life interact in shaping the contemporary city.
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Featured Essays presents the longer and more developed articles
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Urban Visions explores speculative projects and alternative future
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Urban Notes collects shorter observations, arguments and visual provocations
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Exclosure from the City — Conversation with Ideal Spaces
I recently joined Ideal Spaces for a conversation around The Compound City and the growing fragmentation of contemporary urban life. During the discussion, we explored the rise of gated urbanism, the erosion of shared public space, and the role of neighborhood design as an alternative to increasingly enclosed models of development. Many of these reflections were later expanded in my essay The Compound City, published in the Urban Essays section of this website. The conversati
Francesco Procacci
May 241 min read
✖️ Stop calling this nature (It’s real estate)
We’ve learned to put trees on towers and call it green. But that’s not green architecture. 👉 Real green architecture is not about planting trees on top of buildings. It’s about recognizing them, and planting them in the ground. Because they already build the architecture. 🌳 They shape space 🌿 They regulate climate 🪺 They host biodiversity 💡 They carry meaning 🫁 They absorb carbon This post compares five urban climates — Tropical. Temperate. Mediterranean. Alpine. Arid.
Francesco Procacci
Mar 141 min read
Do we still need sidewalks?
Sidewalks tell the story of our cities. And maybe also their future. 1️⃣ Before the sidewalk: Streets were shared — people, animals, carts all in the same space. 2️⃣ The birth of the sidewalk: Industrial age. Cars took the road, pedestrians were pushed to the margins. 3️⃣ The boulevard age: Sidewalks widened, trees and civic life returned — but still separated from traffic. 4️⃣ The end of the sidewalk: The real innovation is not a wider strip. It’s dissolving the strip itself
Francesco Procacci
Mar 141 min read
Stop romanticizing green buildings. start designing green cities
Slide 1: 🚫 This is not nature. It’s architectural ego in green clothing. An iconic object. A disconnected episode. A visual gesture that does nothing to reshape how we live, move, breathe. Slide 2: ✅ This is. A boulevard with trees that have space. A green urban system that cools, shades, connects. A living street — not a rooftop illusion. We don’t need forests on buildings. We need forests in the city. Design is not just about making objects look sustainable. It’s about mak
Francesco Procacci
Aug 11, 20251 min read
FROM BOULEVARDS TO BIO-SYSTEMS
Urban nature didn’t begin with vertical forests. It began with boulevards. In 19th-century Paris, Haussmann’s tree-lined avenues transformed the city: they brought light, order, shade, and a new rhythm of public life. They were modern. Monumental. Civilized. But let’s be honest: 🌿 These boulevards were not ecosystems. They were aesthetic infrastructures — elegant, but ecologically inert. Today, we need more than promenades. We need living systems. Urban nature is not a decor
Francesco Procacci
Aug 11, 20251 min read
From social blocks to living systems
Same density. Different mindset. Two models of social housing — One repeats. One regenerates. On the left: Standardized blocks. Efficient. Isolated. Lifeless. Nature is residual. Community is abstract. On the right: Still social housing. Still affordable. But fragmented, varied, rooted in soil and care. Trees have space. People have reasons to stay outside. It’s not just “green.” It’s living structure. 🌿 Urban Nature is Not a Decoration — It’s the foundation of social inclus
Francesco Procacci
Aug 11, 20251 min read
STOP DESIGNING ROOFTOP SQUARES. START DESIGNING A CITY OF COURTYARDS
Too many “iconic” projects move squares and courtyards to rooftops or inside private buildings. Spaces that are: 🚫 Hard to reach 🚫 Often semi‑private 🚫 Disconnected from daily life They look spectacular in photos. But irrelevant for real urban life. ✅ Real courtyards are different: 🌿 Public or semi‑public 🏃♀️ Accessible, permeable, lived in 🌳 Shade, trees, biodiversity 👨👩👧 Places for connection, play, care 1️⃣ The value of courtyards A well‑designed courtyard is n
Francesco Procacci
Aug 10, 20251 min read
One Great Green Ring to Connect Them All…
For decades, Milan’s urban policies have focused on 🏙️ central towers and high‑end projects. But no large‑scale territorial vision has emerged — one that could: 🌱 Redistribute nature across the metropolis 🏘️ Improve quality of life in first‑ring municipalities 🤝 Create new social and economic connections 📜 A legacy of rings Milan’s story is made of concentric layers: 🏰 Medieval walls 🛡️ Spanish bastions 🚋 19th‑century boulevards 🚗 Ring roads & motorways Now it’s time
Francesco Procacci
Aug 10, 20251 min read
SMART CITY BULLSHIT
I’m tired of hearing the propaganda. The “smart city” has become an ideology — one that puts engineering above architecture, urban planning, design, and even the ethics and responsibility of those shaping our cities. Yes — technologies can make urban life better: • Energy-efficient street lighting. • Apps for bike-sharing or e-mobility. • Futuristic panels that “clean the air” with algae. All fine. All useful. But without a structural vision — I’d say infrastructural — of how
Francesco Procacci
Aug 10, 20251 min read
Urban Nature is Not a Decoration
Critical Notes and Projects for a New Green City “The future of green cities won’t grow from rooftops. It starts at street level — with shade, roots, and shared air.” Forget green rooftops and glossy façades. This book is a manifesto against the illusion of decorative ecology — and a call to design cities as living ecosystems. From Milan to Saigon, from the Alps to the tropics, Francesco Procacci exposes the myths of greenwashing and presents concrete alternatives: 🌳 Trees a
Francesco Procacci
Jun 18, 20251 min read
Is this the end of zoning? Not quite. But it’s time to rethink it.
Urban planning was born with a modernist idea: divide the city by functions. Homes here, schools there. Factories at the edge. Each area with one purpose, clearly separated from the rest. But cities — and lives — don’t work like that anymore. Let’s look at four traditional urban functions and how they’re shifting: 📍 Home is no longer just “home” A place for work, care, learning, entertainment. One room, many lives. 📍 The street is a plaza Not just for cars. In many cities,
Francesco Procacci
Jun 15, 20251 min read
FRAMING THE SOUTH
Urban Lessons from 20 Years in Vietnam A book by Francesco Procacci “You don’t frame the South to define it. You frame it to finally see where you’re standing.” This is not a manual. Not a portfolio. Not a memoir. It’s a collection of urban moments — lived scenes, unexpected lessons, built projects (and sometimes erased ones) — through which I slowly learned to rethink my profession. And myself. What you’ll find in this book 📍 20 years of design practice in Vietnam , shared
Francesco Procacci
May 7, 20252 min read
A Tale of Two Cities of Water
Milan and Saigon: A Dialogue on Water, Memory, and Urban Futures What happens when a city forgets its waters? And what future can we imagine if it chooses to remember? Milan and Ho Chi Minh City , two cities as distant as Europe and Southeast Asia, are brought together in this short visual essay—not by their similarities, but by the contrast in their relationship with water. Milan, once a city shaped by its Navigli canals, buried its waters in pursuit of modernity. Streets
Francesco Procacci
May 7, 20252 min read
A Central Park in Saigon
Placing New York City's Central Park in the center of Saigon at its correct scale is not simply a naïve Photoshop exercise. This is a provocation to support the idea that the population of the metropolitan city of Ho Chi Minh City and its neighboring provinces strongly needs a regional park of such size to host countless recreational and sporting activities, as well as representing a green lung and home to biodiversity. In this short research I have analyzed the most importa
Francesco Procacci
Aug 4, 20242 min read
The Great Ring of Hanoi
The Great Ring of Hanoi is a visionary project and proposal for the creation of a large linear ring park for the Vietnamese capital city, of such dimensions as to be visible even from space (like the great wall of China). It is a project that takes inspiration from the Great Green Belt of London, a fundamental piece in the culture of urban and regional planning worldwide. In this particular case the green belt really takes the form of a large green ring, with a radius of 14 k
Francesco Procacci
Aug 4, 20241 min read
Saigon South Eco-Park: a water + nature + agriculture based community
By living for 20 years in Ho Chi Minh City, I felt the necessity to create a "vision" for its southern region. I believe that one of the needs of the vast current urban region is to enhance the network of its rivers and canals, which can form the backbone for imagining a different urban development , more oriented towards green eco-compatible models. In this master plan I try to imagine this different development model, through the creation of an "eco urban park", that is, an
Francesco Procacci
Oct 2, 20231 min read
Would you like to live in a city without cars?
How can city planning encourage more sustainable cycle-pedestrian mobility? 🚲 🛴 🚶♂️ Based on my academic researches and my twenty years of experience in the urban design sector, it is possible to design cities more people and cycle friendly, for the benefit of the overall urban environment and the people health and safety. This brief research contains my main considerations and key points on the topic, with the hope that it can be useful for the community interested in th
Francesco Procacci
Sep 22, 20231 min read
VIETNAM COASTLINE: FIGHTING AGAINTS ITS PRIVATIZATION
A global design dilemma, told through Vietnam’s shores. What’s happening along the coast of Vietnam is not unique— but it is emblematic. Across the world, beaches are being reshaped by invisible lines: private vs public, gated vs shared, profit vs common good. Vietnam, with its 3,000 km of shoreline and exploding tourism economy, has become a frontline case. 🌀 “Vietnam Coastline: Fighting Against Its Privatization” is a visual and critical libretto that uses Vietnam as a le
Francesco Procacci
Aug 20, 20232 min read
SAIGON IN URBAN PERSPECTIVES
This is a research I conducted a few years ago entitled "Saigon in urban perspectives". It shows in a photographic key how two cities very distant from each other, Milan in Italy and Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, have partly lost the heritage of canals and waterways, buried over the years to cope with rapid urban development and the enormous growth of cars and road mobility. Today it is a question of rediscovering this heritage to plan a water city on a human scale, where cana
Francesco Procacci
Jul 29, 20231 min read
GREEN APRICA MASTER PLAN 2030
LA SPIRALE VERDE APRICA-CORTENO 2030 Green Aprica è un Master Plan per il territorio ed il comprensorio turistico di Aprica e Corteno Golgi al 2030 il cui obiettivo principale è quello della sua transizione verde attraverso molteplici strategie urbanistiche e di pianificazione territoriale finalizzate al suo rilancio e riposizionamento turistico e più in generale rivolte all’innalzamento della qualità della vita e dell’ambiente per residenti e turisti. Oggi è richiesto un rip
Francesco Procacci
Oct 16, 20221 min read
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