Redevelopment and Design of Turin Tobacco Factory under the Urban Equalization Policy

In the context of global urbanization, the mechanisms of transferring, trading, and compensating land development rights have gradually evolved into key policy tools that balance social equity, economic development, and environmental governance. Confronted with the challenges of multi-stakeholder coordination and the distribution of development rights in complex urban renewal scenarios, many countries are exploring ways to institutionalize and spatialize development rights. This study focuses on Italy’s "Urban Equalization Policy" and addresses the core research question: how does this policy regulate land redevelopment through the mechanism of building rights, and further guide urban spatial design? The aim is to investigate how Italy’s urban equalization policy influences the transformation of land redevelopment patterns and urban spatial structures, and to construct a "Policy–Development– Design" transmission framework that evaluates the policy’s applicability and effectiveness through the integration of theory and practice. By doing so, the study attempts to reveal how the equalization policy achieves rational allocation and spatial regulation of building rights in response to diverse public objectives in urban redevelopment. The theoretical section reviews international experiences with land development rights and their institutional evolution, and offers an in-depth analysis of the origins, operational mechanisms, and spatial strategies of Italy’s urban equalization policy. Based on this analysis, the study identifies three key dimensions of institutional innovation: spatial, by reallocating resources through the transfer of building rights; functional, by promoting mixed-use development and breaking conventional zoning constraints; and structural, by balancing multistakeholder interests to achieve social equity. This institutional research—currently underexplored in domestic academic contexts—constitutes the theoretical foundation and originality of this study. Building upon this theoretical foundation, the study proposes a three-tiered framework— Policy–Development–Design—that systematically traces how the building rights mechanism influences land development models and is further translated into spatial design strategies. Drawing upon established urban design theories, the study outlines four key strategies: composite functional organization, adaptive architectural spaces, shared public space systems, IV and people-oriented mobility networks. The practical component of the research centers on the redevelopment of the Royal Tobacco Factory in Turin, with two design scenario —university-led redevelopment and university–city collaborative redevelopment—developed to assess the adaptability and effectiveness of the proposed framework. The first scenario emphasizes functional optimization and ecological compensation within existing institutional constraints, while the second introduces cross-district transfers of building rights and collaborative investment to support high-intensity, mixed-use development. The comparison illustrates how the framework adapts to different redevelopment goals and validates the equalization policy’s regulatory capacity in diverse urban contexts. In conclusion, this study systematically analyzes the institutional structure, operational mechanisms, and spatial implications of Italy’s urban equalization policy.