The Virtual City

AESOP ACSP Third join congress THE NETWORK SOCIETY: THE NEW CONTEXT FOR PLANNING Leuven july 8 – 12 2003 Track 10: Information and communication technology and city ICT and city: a new town planning way to manage city change Romano Fistola♣

THE INVISIBLE CITY Among “determinants” of urban changing, characterizing the contemporary city dimensions the technological one plays a fundamental role for future scenarios comprehension and foreshadowing. Spreading of new info-computerized technologies, within all the contexts of human activity, is deeply influencing behaviors as well as “ways of using” the city from its inhabitants. New phenomena of activities virtualization settled on the territory are progressively modifying the functional asset of the city, defining new allocation and distribution processes of the functional weights. The urban space is progressively transforming its own codes related to the collective interaction. Over the history men have always interacted by exchanging symbolic forms or by starting other communicative processes within a meeting space, a shared physical place (Thompson, 1995). New info-computerised technologies have progressively jeopardised this model. Moreover, the spreading of multimedia products caused new forms of social interaction and it is progressively transforming the ways community uses urban space. The new info-computerised communication is undergoing a slow, veiled, but probably irreversible transformation process where the city is the main place of circulation and storage of information (Meier, 1962). A sort of invisible city, characterized by a parallel dimension, which entrusts to bit flows the development of its own activities and no more to the physical movement of human atoms (Mitchell, 1995). The M.E-Tropolis (Fistola, 2001). The progressive infrastructure process of urban areas through optical fibre cabling is contributing to the spreading of urban changing process. Many experts agree with the statement that all this will determine relevant changing also in the physical dimension, in the built space, within which some urban areas will dematerialize and get transformed in “electronic spaces” (Graham e Marvin, 1996). Considering this it can be supposed that the urban space will progressively change in intensity and ways (Fistola, 1998). In this scenario, comes the city planning, the discipline studying and tuning up government procedures of territorial transformation and that it seems, in Italy, to be abandoned in a dangerous torpor. From this point of view, the city planning meditation was superficial. It was never taken into consideration how man interaction within and with the city, could University of Naples, Dept. Of Town and Country Planning, Naples - Italy. E-mail: [email protected]

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generate a planning system substantially different from those in use, and in which functional virtualization processes could be included, inside wider strategies of decompression and promotion of specific urban areas. It is widely known that technology follows diffusion and penetration processes which are difficult to understand in space and in time, and it also receives from the market unexpected and “devastating” accelerations (in a social acceptation). Therefore, in few years new communication network diffusion is transforming the city, and once again we do not have models and procedures of government city planning of this phenomenon. A great deal of the Italian city planning debate is still concentrated (or takes refuge) on other themes concerning new forms of negotiated city planning, new forms of participation to planning projects, the value of the ground checking etc. It is allowed to ask: if urban functions will change, if their distribution on the land will change, if intensity in usage, the moving flux and maybe even the structure of the city will modify, what utility comes from having perfect urban equalization techniques also considering that the values of the ground is frequently connected to the type of activity installed? These questions, which aims at being provocative, come from the belief that probably, even for those specific themes, “[…] it is necessary to knot the torn threads of city planning to the transformation processes in progress. (Mazza, 1997). It is important to stress that lately we are seeing a revival of interest for these themes, partly due to the increasing request demanded to city planners, from public administrators flooded by urban territory cabling requests. It is now well understood how optical fibre structures in certain urban areas, can contribute to functional revitalization processes and therefore define precise territorial promotion choices. This cannot be out of the city planning subject, so it becomes necessary to define procedures able to harmonize city planning with the media and the network structure diffusion, making the last ones government and land development managing instruments. There are many possible investigations in this respect, but those are the points on which there is a priority to go deepen: • Definition of new interpretative models able to catch the present urban transformation imposed by the new communication technologies; • Classification of the new city urban functions; • Pre-figuration of city planning which take into account the new digital dimension of the city and the progressive changing in functional weights. Defying new city plan instruments in order to govern and direct land transformations requested by new technologies is among the tasks that nowadays community confers to city planning. That is why it is asked to overcome techno–science fears as well as the recovering of the technical and cultural role lost long time ago. A city defines its spaces relating them among themselves, describes the rules with which the different portions of land are in a reciprocal relationship, in space and dynamically, along time axis. A city is an instrument to organize the land and is a witness of spirit and time; a virtual city, for us, is an instrument to organize a virtual land and it is the witness of information era we are entering. (Mumford, 1953). In such a scenario, as just underlined, an efficiency loss of planning and government

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processes of the urban transformation, connected to the intensity usage of the land according to dynamics, which, at the moment, have no control or forecast methods, will occur. It is therefore necessary to prefigure new urban planning ways, which will have to take into consideration new functional organization generated by virtualization processes of the urban functions, in defying intensity, in activities on land usage distribution and destination. THE SYSTEMIC APPROACH: THE COMMUNICATIONAL SYSTEM The relationship between technical innovation and land transformation is going through a phase where the effects, according to many experts and non experts, will produce changing in the way of interacting in the city. Internet diffusion and building of “virtual activity systems” are changing cultural heritages, social ethics, and, in general, ways the urban population uses the city. Possible urban scenario definition comes when operating inside the urban system, defying the rules to control functional evolution. Market rules and wide economies are pushing towards urban activity “virtualization” in different fields (productive, business, administrative etc). This will lead to new assets of the city. Many physical moving flux will be replaced by network transaction, there will be new moving typologies, urban functions with a less virtualization potential will ask for a greater physical space and equipment (infrastructural) unlike other activity that will dematerialize to occupy only an “electronic space” in the web. What looks now important is to define the “geo-reference measure” procedures of virtualization potential levels of the different fields of the city. This is one of the principle results the research is trying to pursue. The proposal of new procedure for governing city modification processes caused by the spreading of new telecommunication technologies has to become one of the themes of the national city planning debate which at the moment seems to ignore the importance of this specific examination for the future of the city. City interpretations The need to analyze and to formalize the “urban functioning” mechanisms in order to set the appropriate metropolitan government strategies, is increased during the city evolution together with the degree of complexity in urban environment. It is urgent to understand the present need to define the degree pattern and to favor inferring of modern metropolitan center “behavior”, generally affected by deep complexity crisis. It is known that many interpretative theories have been adopted from the experts during the urban evolution, to try penetrating the city essence and formalizing the laws. These modeling attempts have often been influenced by the dominant scientific and methodological guidance of the moment. On this matter, we remember the mechanistic pattern in which all reality, and as a consequence the urban reality, was assimilated to a machine and the city and the urban processes very similar to the “mechanisms” of functioning. At the beginning the organic vision, based on the Aristotelian spiritualism, had suggested interpretative paradigm of biologic type. When the mechanistic theory was overcome and the quantic and relativistic vision arrived, an interpretative, evolutionary and dynamic model assimilating the city to a system, developed. We are now seeing the development of new interpretative city patterns, generally referable

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to the systemic vision, but oriented to consider the phenomenon specific aspects. Among those the ecological pattern probably represents the one more appreciated since it recovers, even if in an Eco- systemic vision, proper environment epistemological contents, which, in a way, elaborates again the message of experts like Lovelock, Rifkin, Mc Harg and others. The systemic approach can therefore be considered the interpretation pattern of reference although considering the interesting changing, chaotic city (Gargiulo and Papa, 1997), spinner city (Batty and Longman, 1996), etc. that it has caused. According to this approach, it is possible to figure the city as a system formed by parts in which mutual relations are active. Urging beyond analogy it is also possible to state that the urban system presents complexity characteristics, being the relations among the parts difficult to recognise, as well as dynamism, continuously evolving towards stages different from the previous ones. Among many system properties, we can detect one particularly interesting for the study of each system included in a bigger system (meta-system) and its parts are part of systems (undersystems). It is possible to affirm that among the different under-systems forming the urban system we can detect three of them: a functional system, a physical system and a psychoperceptive system (FIG: 1).

figure 1: the urban system and the under systems with the three detected in the systemic approach

This conceptual distinction does not find any confirmation in physical reality, where the two mentioned systems are indivisible, but abstraction is permitted due to the adoption of the systemic logic for building up the interpretative pattern. The functional system consists of all urban activities (functions) and of relation among those (communications). The physical system consists of all urban spaces (houses, streets, and squares) inside which activities take over and networks where (physic, energetic, telecommunication, etc.) communications flow. The psycho-perceptive system is defined through the urban dimension perception from citizens. It is the image each of us carries in ourselves, whose image rises from the complex and changing relationship with the human being, physical system and functional system

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(Papa, 2001). The three under-systems compose the urban one and are linked by relations which allow to connect to each element of the functional system the same in the physical system where activity takes place and the corresponding mental image that the citizen builds in such spaces (Fistola, 1992). Once this interpretative pattern has been gained, we will concentrate on the under-system, more sensitive to the impacts coming from the spreading of new info-telecommunication technologies: the functional system (FIG. 2).

figure 2: communicational system generation

This sensitivity is first of all referable to a characteristic inside the system concerning Endosystemic relations. In fact, the “structure” (all relations) of the functional system is formed by communications. It is therefore immediate to understand how structure variations produce parts changing and consequently status changes in the under-system, which catalyse, as well, the all-urban system evolutions. As already shown (Fistola and La Rocca, 1997), considering the fast changing in the ways of using the city, the spreading of new info-telecommunication technologies is determining, it is possible to preview the birth of a new urban under-system generated by the progressive virtualisation of some urban functions. In other words the growing phenomenon of transferring on the telecommunication network the urban functions, authorises us to preview, in a systemic approach to the city, the birth of a new under-system containing the virtual images of urban activities to whom it is possible to access via network. This new under-system - in which it has been also shown how it is possible to identify the constitutive elements of a system: parts and relations– has been defined: “communicational” (Fistola and Papa, 1998). This system interact with the other under-systems composing the urban system and its parts (digital function, virtual activities, tele-services, etc.) creating relations with the physical under-system causing, in some cases, transformation.

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URBAN VIRTUALISATION City planning bases its government processes of land transformation on three actions: • • •

Definition of the function typologies to introduce in the land The choices of the land functions introduction sites Decision on “how” much of each function has to be introduced on the land (usage intensity).

The land usage intensity describes the functional “quantum” in each urban environment. It is to say that through usage intensity it is possible to define the load (from the urban point of view) that an activity (or a group of activities) has on a specific land. There are urban parameters able to express this intensity and they are mainly referable to index such as the land density, the usage index, cover relation, etc. These three actions are at the base of the planning procedure of the future urban asset. The virtualisation processes of the urban functions generate the planning pattern, engraving on each described action. The progressive functional virtualisation changes the function typology to be introduced, defining again the possible distribution and, above all, “discharges” the intensity values of the land usage. We try to better explain this through the formulation of an analogy which takes up, only in the image, a similitude proposed by Forrester (Forrester, 1974). Let us image a pot full of water placed on a flame (FIG: 3).After few minutes part of the water inside the pot evaporates changing status (from liquid to gas); as a consequence the pot lows its initial weight. The pot and the water can be assimilated respectively to the physical system and the functional system of the city and the weight of this system (quantity of water) can be considered as the expression of the level of general usage intensity of the city (FIG. 4). The flame represents the new technology, which gives energy to the city and causes a change in status of one of its part. This changing shows in the production of a transparent image (vapour) of the functional system of the city (water). Vapour is the image of the digital city, which determines a lowering in the general usage intensity and a new asset (configuration) of the water/pot system, lighter than before.

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figure 3: boiling container analogy

figure 4: “from the pot to the city”

The above mentioned consideration brings us to the definition of a new asset in the urban system in which the communicational system can act as a lowering usage intensity element of the land exercised by the located functions in the city. If we take into account what has previously been defined as concern the possibility of evaluating, for each urban environment the potential installed activities, we understand the importance to deepen this approach. This

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has to be done in order to set up new procedures for the planning and the governing of land transformation which have to include innovation technology processes and products among their planning instruments. NEW URBAN ACTIVITIES: A NEW CLASSIFICATION The objective to express a functional virtualisation measure located on land can be pursued, first of all, by defining a classification of the urban activities in relation with the minor or the major propensity to be transferred on the network. It is to say that is possible to divide urban functions using as a taxonomic factor the datum coming from the observation of what is happening in the city. In this sense, considering virtualisation as a reference process, it seems possible to divide the urban function in the following classes: RESISTANT FUNCTIONS MUTANT FUNCTIONS GENERATED FUNCTIONS

(mixed, hybrid)

Resistant functions are those urban activities that need for their development an indispensable interface relationship and the necessary adapted physical space achievement. They are generally insensitive to the technological “push”. Among those, we include all functions linked to recreation activities, sport, culture and shows, etc. Mutant functions can be classified as those, which are re-engineering their processes to new possibilities offered by telecommunications, and are progressively moving towards the urban cyber space. Mutant functions can be also classified, as far as the major or the minus virtualisation sensitivity concerns, detecting three under-systems. Finally, we have to take into consideration the new activities that the web has generated, inside the communicational system, due to the new communication possibilities. This functions are particularly interesting, in the city planning point of view, since they are modifying the physical assets of the city allocating in itself the right spaces for their development. So, the functions generated by the cyber space are creating new physical spaces inside a real city, redefining also the citizens ways of usage. For some functions it is possible to make a distinction, in fact we can detect: • Pure generated functions • Hybrid generated functions The first ones include activities generated exclusively from the web and that had no specific allocation space before in the city. Significant examples of these functions can be telecentres, cyber points, telecottages, telematic squares, etc. It looks interesting to describe some cyber-points, which represent totally new urban functions and have a great and “unknown” usage intensity in the urban space. Cyber-points (or net-centres) are places where people physically go to surf on the net. Generally, there are computers on line through whom we can explore the web, chatting, send e-mail messages etc. Only few years ago, many observers foresaw the absolute failure of these activities justified by the tendency of cyber-surfers to a domestic solipsism. In less than a year in London, five cyber-points of the “easyEverything” group opened (FIG. 5). Today in London (June 2003) there are eleven internet cyber-points (the last one located in

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Picadilly Circus) with 2400 pc’s in total. The easyEverithing group has changed in easyInternetcafè (October 2001) and has opened cyber-points in London, Paris, New York, Amsterdam, Athens, Barcellona, Berlin, Brussells, Edimburgh, Glasgow, Huddersfield, Madrid, Manchester, Munich, Rome and Rotterdam. They are opened 24 hours a day and it is possible to surf on the net for one pound an hour. With an extra pound, it is possible to be personally assisted by experts during surfing and after midnight, only one pound is needed to surf until morning.

figure 5: one of the london “easyInternetcafè” (Located in Victoria Station nearby)

The attempt to mask the “easyInternetcafè” - where at the entrance there are always long queues of new users (FIG. 6) like the original Internet Cafe, small places where it is possible to have a cappuccino and surfing on the net (these activities are classified as hybrid generated functions), - fails when we look at the figures, only for London, of these telecommunication “Mc Donald’s”: • • • • •

Open 24 hours a day; More than 400 computers available for surfing in each cyber-point; Around 4,500 users every day in turn over for each cyber-point; Strategic location inside the city to easy the physical access; Franchising organisation.

Among the reasons of success of this generated function, we have to take into account the

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easiness, the speed and the cheap access to the web. One of the slogan of easy Everything says: “Surfing with us is cheaper than at home and you don’t wait on the Web”.

figure 6: the access queue to get to the easy everything in victoria station in london

Which is the usage intensity of the activities that from London is spreading all over the big cities of Europe and are already in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Barcelona and Edinburgh? The hybrid-generated functions are those digital activities, which do not originate proper spaces inside the city but they use spaces adapted for other compatible activities in which there are systems for going on the web. Internet cafés, cyber pubs, media-library etc. are significant examples of these functions which are recently generating some interesting episodes like “My Beautiful Laundrette” in Naples (FIG: 7).

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figure 7: my beautiful laundrette in the inner city of naples; on the back of the place there is a space dedicated to surfing on internet and to multimedia activities (courses, projections etc.)

This function, started thanks to the youth entrepreneurs law, matches two completely different activities such us a laundrette (symbol space of American university cities from 50s onwards) and an Internet access point. You make up time for surfing while waiting for the laundry activity. Mix generated activities are spreading fast also in physical sites of activities which use the net as a new instrument of business (travel agencies, building societies, banks, etc). There also are examples of generated functions which use spaces devoted to unused activities like in Milan gallery where in the old public toilets, according to a Leonardo Benevolo’s project, will be created an internet point with 50 computers where the citizens will surf on the Web even at night. It is interesting to point out how generated functions follow localisation patterns which consider accessibility and centrality in the urban contest, as main choice factors. From the just given classification we note how it is possible, using qualitative type estimations not yet numerable, catalogue each urban function by using the described classes and dividing them according to sensitivity towards virtualisation processes. Following this taxonomy, but reducing to two, the classes to be used (resistant functions and mutant functions) a procedure able to give localised measure of virtualisation of the allocated functions in specific urban sites will be posed.

A PROCEDURE FOR FUNCTIONAL VIRTUALISATION MEASUREMENT Starting from the method proposed by the Naples research group to evaluate the degree of mobility fluxes that each urban function exercises on urban environment (Fistola and

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Urciuoli, 1996), it seems possible to derive a procedure to get a potential virtualisation measure of specific urban sites. The mentioned method was based on the definition, for each install method (called Offer Unity: U.d.O.), of a matrix/vector containing quantitative evaluations towards specific variables. In other words, a matrix was built, which had in its lines the different urban activities represented by the allocation sites (hospital, university, supermarket, bank, etc.) and on the columns of 13 evaluation categories that, globally considered, express a flux measure that reached the sites to get a service or a good. Utilising these judgements (13 categories), subsequently transformed in figure values through the usage of “fuzzy sets”, we have been able to associate to each urban function an expressive value of the moving polarisation, called afterwards “polarisation potential”. These potentials have been verified and calibrated again through flux effective samples to reach the U.d.O (offer unity). We achieved a matrix in which each single U.d.O. (offer unity) has been associated to the polarisation potential express to users/day (Tab 1). U.d.O.

Polarisation potentials Record, Library, ... 35 Commercial exercises 1 with high frequency usage (Newagent, Cigarettes shops etc.) Business shops with 37 medium frequency usage (Supermarkets, etc.) Business shops with 52 low frequency usage (Hypermarkets, etc.) Business shops with 37 medium frequency usage Business shops with 1 high frequency usage Hotel 36 Congress building, 47 Conferences room Fair centre 50 Fair centre 50 Health farm 53 Hospital 100 University clinic 96 State University 83 athenaeum Research centre 42 Art gallery, Museum, 35 picture gallery

Final fluxes (ingr./g.) 1500 50

1750

2500 2000 50 300 300 300 300 1000 4500 4500 4000 200 500

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Record, Library Newspaper and periodical library Secondary school Post office Equipped area (sport, spare time) Equipped area (sport, spare time) Cinema, Theatre Military area Rehabilitation Centre Parish Church

35

500

68 28 28

1000 1200 1350

28

1350

40 25 10 25

500 1200 450 300

Tab. 1: A matrix extract of the U.d.O. with relative polarisation points and number of users attracted daily.

Assuming the polarisation potential as usage intensity measure of each located activity and considering the possibility to express each potential in users daily attracted by the function (U.d.O.), it is possible to get to functions virtualisation measure located in specific areas, classifying the activities in resistant and mutant activities and considering the number of users concerning the polarisation of those last ones. The percentage of mutant U.d.O. users (FM) on the total of users attracted by U.d.O. in the single areas (Land Functional Unity) in which the land is divided for the study, can be considered representative of virtualisation (and therefore of intensity usage pulling down) of that area. In figure 8 it is reported the flux diagram which synthetically describes procedure steps and the sequence of actions to be started. Considering the land for calculating the virtualisation, we continue in the Land Functional Unity (UTF) division of the land, significant areas inside of which we carry on the installed activity emphasis. Once emphasised U.d.O. we make a distinction between resistant U.d.O. (FR) and mutant U.d.O. (FM). We after calculate the total attracted users for each UTF and we calculate the average polarisation for U.d.O. through the relation between the total users and the number of U.d.O.. Calculating the average polarisation summation of FM (virtualisation potentials) for each UTF we obtain an expression of virtualisation potential for each considered UTF. It is evident that this procedure has some “forcing” in particular in the classification phase of FM, but anyway it can represent a first indication for defining a new method which will be deepened, re-calibrated and specified even considering the results of experiments and the checks operating on the territory.

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figure 8: definition procedure flux diagram of the land virtualisation potential

THE DIGITAL TOWN PLAN The need to prefigure an instrument able to make compatible the different needs shown by actors, managers and citizens in general seems, considering what has been so far explained, to be necessary. This last segment of the study will tend to identify the characteristics and the main aspects leaving to future examinations, which possibly will be proposed also from other experts, a greater definition of the theme. At present there is no codified procedure (or instrument) which allow to proper co-ordinate intervention of cabling inter-structuring of the city which take into account the different aspects and the different questions and desires coming from groups of actors/managers active on land. In this optic, an urban government instrument has to be prefigured which foresees a “digital arearisation” of the land and establishes urban cabling action rules. It is possible to call this instrument “Digital Urban Plan”. The Digital Urban Plan (PD) defines a development opportunity (also strategic) for the city thanks to the setting of a compatibility system among four “consideration areas”: • Urban sites virtualisation potential in which are allocated functions strongly sensitive to digital transformation; • Urban asset plan pre-figuration with the definition of the destination, distribution and

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usage intensity of the borough land activities; • The inter-structuring request presented by the telecommunication firms which aim at pursuing a certain benefit through city cabling; • The need to give a social spreading access to instruments and the possibilities the web makes available for all citizens especially the sensitive ones. PD comes from a series of investigations linked to the mentioned entreaties. From those entreaties, it is possible to define a series of works, which will be forming the contents of PD. As before mentioned the all setting procedure has been developed in GIS environment for whom the entreaties will be transformed in informative levels which will be properly populated by data and will allow the possibility of an immediate interfacing with other instruments (master plan and so on) which include specific geo-referenced land intervention. In synthesis, it is possible to think at the structuralisation of four informative levels containing graphic and alphanumerical information respectively, concerning: • Urban virtualisation map; • Cabling projects proposed by TLC companies; • The zoning concerned by the master plan (considering also the plans in itinere); • An “inclusive modernisation” plan of citizens. As it appears on the list, they are informative levels supposing elaboration and investigations, which allow us to get to the final proposal. In particular, as far as the “inclusive modernisation plan” concerns, we think about an instrument able to conjugate the social – land characteristics of the city with the need to give spread access to new technologies and create electronic alphabetisation systems for the population. To define the government action of digital transformation on city land the PD will be articulated in: • A zoning for the land digital development; • Digital standards; • An integrated cabling operative plan (POCI); • An intervention programme; • Plan develpoping rules. Digital arearisation (ZD) will divide the land in areas for which the previewed intervention will be defined, network equipment, eventual variation of the functional usage intensity, possible reallocation activities, etc.. ZD should come from the confrontation between land government instruments in force, those in itinere, the functional virtualisation map and a synthesis of cabling proposal requested by the TLC firms. Digital standards recall the city planning standards and prefigure some equipment (web access public points, telecommunication squares, citizens’ telecommunication service centres, etc.) which will have to be previewed in each area indicated by the plan. Digital standard will be defined in particular by referring to ZD and the inclusive modernisation plan will show which areas need a major digital “presence” for citizens’ need. POCI is the instrument of intervention harmonisation that the different firms will realise on city land. In POCI the larger typology line of the web are specified as well as the lines and the excavation techniques (cutting, micro-cutting, no-dig, etc.), the cables typologies to extend. In POCI are also reported the “cabling standards” that is to say those network segments that the firm, that will manage to

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cable a certain area of the borough land, will be committed will realise free of charge. The intervention programmes establishes that the temporal segments to realise PD by defining a proper sequence of the works to be done. The rules for realising the PD constitute a document containing all indications for the cabling action on land and represents an indispensable reference of all TLC firms and the same rules of the POCI.

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