Urban Landscape Archaeology, Geodesign and the City of Rome

In recent decades, classical archaeologists have followed new theoretical paradigms and considerably widened the scope of their research, in spatial, chronological and thematic terms. In this paper we discuss these trends with regard to the city of Rome. Whilst the focus in Roman archaeology and heritage management was traditionally on canonical monuments in relative isolation, attention has now shifted towards a completely diachronic history of the entire urban landscape. The new approaches have also encouraged archaeologists to focus on the present-day city and the potential role of history and heritage in informing contemporary urban transformation processes. In this paper, we illustrate these trends with a case study of the Roman neighbourhood of Testaccio, where a spatial data infrastructure and geospatial tools have been developed in order to integrate the history and heritage of the district in spatial planning and design projects. The case study highlights how spatial interventions based on the geodesign framework can be fruitfully informed by archaeological and heritage information.