Safer Structures Campaign learned with great satisfaction the god news coming from and an example to follow from a small country, San Marino.
In 2016 Stefano Boeri Architetti was commissioned by the Republic of San Marino to draft the new General Plan (SM 2030) for territorial and urban development. Divided into three main phases – analysis, synthesis of the strategic vision and definition of the new planning instrument – the intervention programme envisaged a continuous participatory exchange among the various stakeholders involved, both residents and those with other vested interests.
Spread over a time scale extending to 2030, the Plan starts with the enhancement of important environmental resources and the Republic’s agricultural landscape, imagining a development based around the vision of a “Garden of Europe” and “Microcosm of biodiversity”. SM2030 therefore plans to transform San Marino into a self-sufficient and cutting-edge model in the use and production of clean energy.
In this context, Stefano Boeri, Norman Foster and representatives of the San Marino Union of Architects and Engineers drafted San Marino Declaration, based on the principles of sustainable and inclusive urban design and architecture in support of sustainable, safe, healthy and socially inclusive housing, urban infrastructures and cities.
On 3rd October 2022, governments across the UNECE region attending the 83rd session of the UNECE Committee on Urban Development, Housing and Land Management have signed the declaration, committing to bolstering the roles of architects, engineers, surveyors, urban planners and designers in ensuring sustainable, safe, healthy, socially inclusive, climate-neutral and circular homes, urban infrastructure and cities.
Through the San Marino Declaration, governments have agreed on a first-of-its-kind set of “Principles for Sustainable and Inclusive Urban Design and Architecture”, to be applied to the design of all buildings and urban developments.
San Marino Declaration urges architects, engineers and city shapers to put sustainability principles into action. That kind of action Safer Structures Campaign would welcome in the UK toward raising the construction standards and enable changes in the way buildings are constructed and made safe for the people.