Skyways: a strategy to humanize the mobility of the vertical cities

Abstract

The lack of contemporary theoretical support for the construction of the vertical city leads to the application of an inherited model, conceived almost a century ago. Therefore, the urban space suffers a strong dehumanization, disconnecting the inhabitants from the urban context. In the search for strategies to make the high-rise city of the coming decades more humane, it is worth proposing the hypothesis of a hyperconnected, three-dimensional and multi-layered vertical city: a mesh of pedestrian skyways between skyscrapers that reproduce streets and urban squares where citizens can socialize. This paper proposes a rereading of those experiences and projects that, from the beginning of the 20th century to the present, built or unrealized, contributed to elaborating a new ideology about elevated pedestrian mobility. These ideas elevated the social and the relational, away from ground level through skyways to find growth strategies at the human scale, and so declaring the age of the multilevel city.