Urbanity. Public life and social quality, by Luisa Bravo

Lighter, Quicker, Cheaper: towards an Urban Activism Manifesto
Luisa Bravo*, Camilla Carmagnini** and Noa Matityahou***
At the beginning of the new Millennium global transformations of urban territories have opened the way,
quite inevitably, to more and more complex and profound considerations about the places that surround us,
the places that we have built, the opportunities we have missed, and those ones we must, instead, learn to
grasp. Common ground, common places, common people, common sense, common tradition were the
declarations of the 13.International Architecture Exhibition in Venice in 2012. It is by now a widely shared
fact that cities are a common good, so actions devoted to its transformation, requalification and valorisation
should involve everyone. Ideas coming from citizens, associations, residents and ordinary people are easily
available and shareable through the virtual world, thus causing drastic changes in the way of thinking and
acting in the urban realm. We witness a raising phenomenon of initiatives and ideas in urban planning and
design as an expression of that «knowledge society» defined by UNESCO World Report (2005).
We are in the midst of an unprecedented moment in planning. Although signs of hardship are all around, we
see the emergence of a powerful, networked, creative movement of people who demonstrate that place-based
and people-oriented actions are possible, despite economic or political obstacles.
Reconnecting citizens to public life in Bologna: the Via Emilia project
The present work tries to examine these emerging issues and to develop a proposal for the city of Bologna,
always been known for its innovative approach towards urban planning and design.
Like many other European and Italian cities, Bologna is characterized by the presence of an historical core
with a recognizable collective value and a sprawled, suburban area which is considered as a quite anonymous
entity. The image of the suburban environment could be described as a patchwork of a multiplicity of urban
settlements, varying in characteristic, density, function and identity.
The major criticism related to suburbs is the lack of identifiable public spaces, or their failure in creating
functional social places. While in the city centre the square represents the most traditional and identifiable
form of public space, designed for that precise purpose, in the periphery this role has been mainly given over
to green and residual areas within the new residential settlements. The set of these dispersed suburban
publics, despite sometimes lacking any designed purpose, is embedded with hidden potentialities, as the
Everyday Urbanism (Chase - Crawford - Kaliski, 2008) movement declares. Instead of criticizing the
absence of social qualities in these existing spaces, or suggesting the realization of new ones, this work tries
to embrace the new bottom-up concepts in urban planning and design and to take the challenge of creating a
network of urban sequences: using only the spaces we already have, every public place can be reinforced by
participating in a wider system and through the use of «lighter, quicker, cheaper interventions», as defined by
the non-profit Project for Public Spaces organization, based in New York.
We argue that it is nowadays essential for urban planning policies, aimed at regeneration activities, to keep
considering people as the main reference point. Society and its needs are continuously changing and
updating, so that any fixed solution is no longer achievable. The only way to maintain the rhythm is to use
people and communities as the primary resource for developing and discovering the best solutions to
accomplish their desires. The prescription’s system and big intervention projects have to be substituted with
a lighter, less strict and more flexible approach, capable of understanding the changeable needs of the 2.0
society and to transform them into acupuncture interventions.
The PSC (Piano Strutturale Comunale), adopted in 2008, shows an innovative interpretation of the city of
Bologna through the image of the «Situations». The most significant aspect of this innovative form of urban
subdivision lies mainly in the fact that the situations are proposed as an alternative and a different description
of the territory in order to overcome the outdated morphological and functional aspects in favour of a more
detailed description which highlights, in particular, social, historical and identifiable characteristics of the
urban territory. The morphological and administrative boundaries in fact, ignore by their nature the intrinsic
differences of the urban environment, especially the social aspects, which are instead taken into account by
the «Situations».

The urban regeneration proposal in Bologna takes place along the 12 km of the urban segment of the Via
Emilia, as a symbolic and representative axis that crosses the city, recognized also as a backbone for the
whole regional territory. The Via Emilia in Bologna crosses eight PSC «Situations» which were taken and
used as the starting point of the project.
This work struggles to discover the embedded potentialities of the Via Emilia’s public spaces. The urban
strategy aims to improve the existing public places, intended as any place worth of value, such as green
areas, bicycle paths, parking lots and infrastructures, creating active networks that would stitch the dispersed
tissue of the area in a way that its flaws would become its virtues.
Figure 1 - The Via Emilia axis in Bologna. The public space network was created selecting potentials and opportunities of different
places, applying the «lighter, quicker cheaper» method and using references from existing successful examples such as Neighborland
association creative proposals.
In order to bring back citizens to their public spaces it is necessary to create the favourable conditions so they
could recognize them as a shared good and have the possibility to improve them. A successful example of
these kind of interventions is the Dutch concept of Woonerf, and its international parallels such as the
English Home Zones or the American Complete Streets, which aims to the transformation of neighbourhood
streets from vehicular based conduits to pedestrian friendly places, where social life could spread as widely
demonstrated by Jan Gehl’s studies (2010).
New connections within the city space could also be generated by using neglected and abandoned
infrastructures that are not being perceived as functional public places, transforming them into new
neighbourhood techno-hubs. «Infrastructure can be discovered by designers, worked on by them, and framed
into a mode of appreciation» (Ingersoll, 2006). This is also an opportunity to demonstrate to municipalities
that welfare services could be perceived in new forms: instead of consolidated needs, basically referred to
standards and measurable facilities, such as green spaces, to be put on a map, we should start thinking on
new desires expressed by contemporary society. Local communities need not just physical but also spiritual,
social and technological services. This means to employ a new methodological approach that connects new

media, community intervention and urban studies paradigms (Foth, 2009). The resulting cross-disciplinary
framework, designed to stimulate socio-economic innovation, will lead to urban sustainability and healthier
local economies. It will also develop knowledge of how social, cultural, economic capital can be of service
in encouraging public consultation, civic engagement and debate, and assist people to be creative and
innovative in everyday life. This will lead to greater social inclusion, fair access to and smart use of local
information and services.
Embedding an innovative approach into ordinary practices
Nowadays it is quite evident that public administrators and architects have to adapt their procedures to a
different way of action, based not only on urban design activities but highlighting what makes that design
activities successful. This means a new way of thinking about the urban realm, mainly based on contexts and
places, to be explored not looking at a map but through in-deep site analysis and investigations, able to
reveal potentialities and opportunities (Lydon, 2011) and to promote smart urban visions, based on an
updated set of contemporary community needs and values. Bottom-up processes of transformation, made by
people, are then developed not following consolidated rules, but through real participating events made by
sharing and appropriation.
Results of this kind of approach are not outside general requirements of urban plans and codes. On the
contrary, they could be a significant tool of the Piano Strutturale Comunale for the city of Bologna,
embedding, in what they define as “Situations”, practices of social engagement as a means for regeneration
processes and for public space networking enhancement. Public administrations should hopefully embrace
such urban trends, as an antidote to the crisis of the contemporary world, through an innovative sustainable
action of governance.
So the present work is just a starting point of a wider research aimed to define «Urban Design and
Placemaking Guidelines in Bologna», for the urban and the suburban city, containing a general strategy able
to generate places, acting on local and social capitals, towards a renewed urbanity (Bravo - Crawford, 2013)
and a more comprehensive urban experience.
Acknowledgments
This research work is part of a graduation thesis entitled «Urban design and Placemaking in Bologna»,
successfully discussed by Camilla Carmagnini and Noa Matityahou on 19th
September 2013 at the University
of Florence, Department of Architecture, iCad - International Curriculum on Architectural Design,
Supervisor prof. Saverio Mecca, Co-supervisor prof. Luisa Bravo. The authors would like to thank prof.
Saverio Mecca whose kind collaboration, precious advices and effective assistance made this work possible.
Notes
* Department of Architecture, University of Florence, luisa.bravo@unifi.it
** Department of Architecture, University of Florence, camillacarmagnini@hotmail.it
*** Department of Architecture, University of Florence, noayahoo@gmail.com
References
Bravo, L. - Crawford, M. (2013), Publics and their spaces: renewing urbanity in city and suburb, in ISUF
2012 – New Urban Configurations conference proceedings, TU Delft (forthcoming)
Chase, J. L. - Crawford, M. - Kaliski, J. edited by (2008), Everyday urbanism, Monacelli Press, New York
Comune di Bologna (2009), Bologna. Leggere il nuovo piano urbanistico, Edisai, Ferrara
Foth, M. (2009), Handbook of research on Urban Informatics: the practice and promise of the real-time city,
Information Science Reference, New York
Gehl, J. (2010), Cities for people, Island Press, Washington DC
Ingersoll, R. (2006), Sprawltown. Looking for the city on its edge, Princeton Architectural Press, New York
Lydon, M. (2011), Tactical Urbanism 2. Short-term action, long-term change, Street Plans, Miami-New
York, available on line
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2005), Toward knowledge societies.
UNESCO World Report, Imprimerie Corlet, Conde-sur-Noireau, France

URBAN TRANSFORMATION: CONTROVERSIES, CONTRASTS and CHALLENGES
543
GENIUS LOCI AND GENIUS SAECULI: A SUSTAINABLE
WAY TO UNDERSTAND CONTEMPORARY URBAN
DYNAMICS
Luisa BRAVO, Dr.
University of Bologna, Italy
luisa.bravo@unibo.it
ABSTRACT
Recent literature shows the limits of modern town-planning theory in front of the
complexity of a new world which is the result of political and economic transformation:
globalization, new forms of marginalization and exclusion, the advent of so-called ―new
economy‖, the redefinition of the production base and labour market have built a different
city structure, based on transactions and symbolic exchanges rather than processes of
industrialization and modernization towards which modern city was oriented. At the same
time complexity is also expressed by contemporary urban populations through upheavals
taking place in the social context: intermittence of citizenship, so that cities are
increasingly experienced and enjoyed by citizens of the world (tourists and/or visitors,
temporarily present) and common citizens (suburban, provincial, metropolitan), the
irregularity and flexibility of timetables, agendas and rhythms of working population, social
mobility, so that individuals have life trajectories and everyday practices less determined
by their social origins, compared to what happened in the past, the radical transformation
of family structure, the growth of the elderly population, the rise of the education level,
then the increased demand of culture, a strong social individualization.
The historic city, that lives in the present time, can be proposed as a sustainable model,
able to collect and contain all instances of the contemporary world, to transform and
express them through the continuity of architectural language inherited from the past. The
historic city retains a character of great attractiveness and fascination, lived as a place
suspended in a timeless universe, capable of representing the public membership
recognition to civitas: genius loci, the spirit of place in the historical dimension of the city,
is what survives to the ever changing functional structures and confers an indelible
character to the city and the urban landscape, through different urban phenomena but
part of a single and recognizable experience. Civitas of the historic city establishes
feeling of its identity, its own genius, on collective themes that a common visitor can
understand as a local version of representative buildings, recognizable in other world
cities.
The contemporary dimension of historical city, namely genius saeculi, the spirit of time,
requires a continuous updating of the collective themes, of public spaces, places of
human relations, and contents that are assigned to the historical forms from people who
lives and inhabit those places, and the inclusion of new meanings, new values, new
forms of social life. In the contemporary city we are experiencing the onset of new public
spaces, linked to globalization phenomena: time-space acceleration, multi-presence,
dissolution of personal relationships, space of flows, new information and communication
systems, experiences related not to sites but to images, way of quick, visual, not physical
knowledge, loss of old solidarity forms and knowledge (family, community) and birth of
new ones (distance and confidence), different and non-fixed scale social places.
Hence this is the challenge for the new Millennium: conciliating the spirit of place, genius
loci, with the spirit of time, genius saeculi, retrieving history values through their
preservation and combining them in the present time through a sustainable model.

14th
IPHS CONFERENCE 12-15 July 2010 Istanbul-TURKEY
544
PAST AND PRESENT OF LIVING CITIES
The city is the human settlement‘s place within territory, it is the transformation of
natural landscape into built environment, according to certain morphology and urban
arrangement, repeatable with different models and shapes, time after time in different
territorial sides, subject to foundation and expansion, defined and edged by specific
administrative codes.
The historic city is that built environment‘s portion which history passed us on as a
legacy and heritage of the past, it is the consolidated face of our culture, result of a
superimposition over centuries, it is the best expression of our cultural identity.«For a
thousand years all over Europe – as Romano points out – citizens inside the city formed
a collective entity pictured as a real holistic subject, an organism endowed with an
identity and will of its own, with a superior order in comparison to every single member
and, while in other civilizations the city is essentially a geographical episode, only in the
European context it refers mainly to morality, a holistic civitas». This means that in
Europe individuals are socially established persons as components of cities. «Civitas
bases its identity upon collective themes which appear to be a local vision of important
buildings to visitors, recognizable in other world‘s cities, even if they actually have a
different meaning, because they not only evoke a ritual behaviour but they show the
civitas identity related to its citizens, comparing their material consistence with other
European cities» (Romano, 1993).Collective themes inside the city – churches, walls,
buildings, theatres, museums, public gardens – acquire their own autonomy as
symbolic language‘s marks, valid as an instrument aimed to portray the urban beauty of
a place. At the end of nineteenth century, far-seeing essays by Camillo Sitte (Sitte,
1889) and Charles Buls (Buls, 1893) expressed the widespread demand to keep
aesthetics and urban composition into the design of the city, besides technical
requests.The desire to build a beautiful town shows itself through the arrangement of
collectives themes, they all related and compared into the urban mass: they are placed
into the dense urban tissue not randomly, but following precise principles underlining
the aesthetic purpose, ordered in authentic sequences, in a studied and pondered
hierarchy. These sequences are possible in Europe due to their huge emotional impact
because of thematic streets and squares built nearby collectivethemes, namely urban
places able to mutually connect themthroughsequences, able to fix highly expressive
objects with a place which elate its significance: these are main squares, market
places, monastery squares, church squares, monumental squares and streets, the
promenade and the boulevard, the tree-lined avenues. The historic city project is
characterized by a deep connection between urban central sequences and distant,
peripheral quarters so that the equality principle among citizens belonging to the
civitasis clearly defined. The beauty of a city reflects this way the primary social purpose
which is, as Romano explains, «the making of urbs intended as the appropriate habitat
for the civitas, opened, dynamic, democratic and egalitarian». Collective themes and
thematic squares or streets, each one with its own name and easily recognizable
among others, represent a sort of catalogue to flip through in order to plan a beautiful
city, a common list for every European city, slowly generated over the years and
enriched gradually, generation after generation. The historic city retains a character of
great attractiveness and fascination, yet topical and ready to answer to the present
generation desires, lived as a place suspended in a timeless universe, capable of
representing the public membership recognition to civitas: the genius loci (Norberg-
Schulz, 1979), the spirit of place in the historical dimension of the city, is what survives

545
to the ever changing functional structures and confers an indelible character to the city
and the urban landscape, through urban phenomena, wich are different in time and
shapes but part however of an unique, recognizable experience. Genius loci is a
Roman concept: according to an ancient belief, every ―independent‖ being has his own
genius, his guardian spirit. This spirit gives life to places and people, bringing them
from the cradle to the grave, determining their character or essence1
.
The modern city, or rather the modern idea of the city, is founded on order, regularity,
tidiness, equality and good government, aimed to the maximum wellbeing of singles
and community, conforming to real people‘s needs. The modern world vision is based
on valuable concepts and conjugated through paradigms of progress, universality of
rights, work, factory, house, welfare state, family and freedom. Modern town planning
turns to a society which has not yet completely expressed its needs, which hasn‘t
voiced a request for services: urban planning counts services diffusion from
neighbourhood to quarter to territorial scale, following a serial standard model, suitable
for every place and contest. Inside the city it‘s possible to focus on four different
functions: living, working, recreation and circulation2
. The city, through the creation of
independent zones, is rationally planned and organized by specialized and functional
parts – houses are pulled apart from production activities, from offices, commerce and
leisure too – connected and bound by a strong, hierarchical mobility system. People
and things orderly moves in clearly defined and recognizable places, every citizen
explores restricted and connoted sides of urban space (bourgeois or working quarters,
industrial areas, trade centers, theatres, restaurants, shops along elegant downtown
streets, canteens or outlying public facilities). The welfare state action is addressed
toward social security (developing the pension system), public health, base level
instruction, house policies, protection of working class in case of unenmployment.
These principles has been enacted with wide architectural and urban plans all over
territorial expansion areas, outside the historic city, following methods and criterions
quite common in several European cities. However this planning action turned out weak
and incapable to transfer historical genius loci values, producing as a result debased
peripheral quarters, from physical, social and environmental point of view.The problem
concerning outskirts is due to the fact that they have been conceived and realized as
something completely different from the rest of the city: in this direction, the English
meaning for sub-urb and the French one, ban-lieu, remove the misunderstand the
italian term periferia could represent, if merely intended in a geographical sense,
namely a spatial dimension of living far away from the centre. The uncontrolled and
unplanned growth of territorial settlements, according to the sprawl(Ingersoll, 2006)
phenomenon intended in its double meaning of diffuse city3
and urbanized countryside4
,
has generated morphologically and architecturally homogeneous suburbs, mostly
residential and inhabited by the same social or ethnic group, giving up that weave of
1
Regarding the interpretation of the concept of genius loci, see the opening address by Michael
Petzet at the 16th General Assembly of ICOMOS, GENIUS LOCI – The Spirit of Monuments and
Sites, Scientific Symposium, Quebec, 30 September 2008.
2
So we read in IV CIAM proceedings in Athens (1933), ―Constatations du IVeme Congres‖,
chapter entitled ―The present situation of cities and their needs‖.
3
Expression coined by Francesco Indovina in 1990 to describe the central area of Veneto Region
(Italy), as a consequence of the occurrence of visible signs of urban sprawl and low density, in
which the hierarchical relationship with the centre is very attenuated or even reversed.
4
Kind of urbanization linked to dispersive processes concerning residence and productive areas of
Tuscany (Italy), which has a polycentric settlement character referred toa pre-district type.

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public and private functions and activities that characterize the historic city. Modern city
appears, therefore, as something much more different from the historic city, not
qualified to answer to old and consolidated needs – the efficient, functional, productive,
accessible city – but first of all unable to provide an answer to new questions, needs
and wishes, either for consolidated services or for new ones – beautiful, usable, safe
and sustainable city. Modernity‘s crisis in its ideals, instruments and representations,
shows the powerlessness to define in its several aspects the present city and to edge it
in a new post-modern or contemporary5
universe, which is investigated with inefficient
and not precise knowledge.
The contemporary city, from the morphological point of view, is the place of
discontinuity and diversity: it‘s recognizable the centre, intended as the historical one,
the centre of civitas and collective themes, while the rest of the urban structure seems
to be blurred, not clearly defined, deprived of reference points but mainly lacking in
collective themes. Urban dimension has a policentric structure, resulting from political
and economic transformations – globalisation, new forms of marginalisation and
exclusion, the advent of so-called ―new economy‖, the redefinition of the production
base and labour market – in a wider and surely over municipal scale, in opposition with
the monocentric one, pertaining to the historic city, so that geographic city doesn‘t
overlap with the institutional city anymore. From the social point of view, contemporary
city can be defined on transactions and symbolic exchanges rather than processes of
industrialization and modernization towards which modern city was oriented. Elements
at the base of this twisting are several: intermittence of citizenship, so that cities are
increasingly experienced and enjoyed by citizens of the world (tourists and/or visitors,
temporarily present) and by common citizens (suburban, provincial and metropolitan);
the radical family structure transformation, so that the family-standard couple with sons,
solid reference for economy and politics, is nowadays a minority; irregularity and
flexibility of timetables, agendas and rhythms of the working population; social mobility,
so that individuals have life trajectories and daily practises less determined by their
social origin, compared to what happened in the past; the elevation of the education
level together with increasing of cultural demand; the growth of elderly population and a
strong social individualization; the rise of poverty over the middle class, under
economic pressure and almost in total absence of welfare policies, due to structural
employment market modifications, origin of uncertainties and frailty for family systems.
Besides, the more or less peaceful presence of contemporary minorities and majorities
makes contemporary city a place of contradiction and conflicts: the relevant presence
of immigrants inside consolidated communities, intended as citizens but different, less
willing to exchange their own cultural identity with acceptance, according to Glazer‘s
model of melting pot(Glazer and Moynihan, 1970) – which unifies diversity by virtue of
powerful integration means – seems to generate new social forms and new examples of
fruition for urban public spaces. In this sense, the theory which consider contemporary
city as a cosmopolis(Sandercook, 1998) constellation is interesting. According to the
American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD), cosmopolis stands for
a«big city populated by people from different countries» (1992), namely by several
structures which are expression of difference-based urban condition, intended as
5
The term contemporary refers to a system that is no longer modern, thatdoesn‘t possess anymore
the structural characteristics on which it was formed. Contemporary, therefore, must be
understood as synonymous of post-modern acceptation by J. F. Lyotard (1979) and C. Jencks
(1977), as an expression of a real transition age.

547
cultural difference. It‘s not surprising, therefore, someone proposed to change three
main principles of modern cohabitation – freedom, equality and brotherhood – into
freedom, diversity and tolerance.
SPACE VERSUS TIME
In the global era the conception of time and space has deeply changed: the world
seems smaller and bigger than ever because everyone can easily reach any place or
have information about it, the way of living and experiencing cities is influenced by
images, reproduced and sold through the web, so that consumption of places is
detached from a slow and physical knowledge, erasing affection and care. According
to the model proposed by Francois Ascher (Ascher, 2000), cities are undergoing a
complete metamorphosis, taking ever more on the character of metapolis: the
transportation system and telecommunication software techniques, the so-called
telematic agora, are the new social glue of a multitude of different individuals, replacing
the square of ancient villages. Society of metapolis has a hypertext-based structure6
, a
network of social links which are established between individuals, so that society is
organized and operates through series of multidimensional and interconnected
networks that provide an increased mobility of people, goods, information, where
individuals move between both in a real and virtual way into separate social worlds,
several times a day.
The contemporary society is made up of multi-owned individuals who are able to
belong to multiple different social fields: family, work, leisure, neighborhood, religious
and socio-political organizations. However not all individuals, for various reasons but
largely related to their personal history, have the same opportunities to build n-
dimensional social spaces or to pass easily from one dimension to another. For
someone, the stratification of network membership is completely flattened: inside
metapolis they are not multi-owned, often inhabit large blocks of public housing, meet
people from their district or neighborhood, so their business, family, local, religious
areas are largely overlap each other. This means that the possibility of moving in a
range of different field creates opportunities that are not accessible to everyone. To
keep away and separate all differencesthere are not only social or geographic barriers:
the global dimension of the contemporary city is characterized by a secular
acceleration concerning capital, people and information movement, continuously
expanding through geographical space, so that everyone can inhabit more than one
place at the same time and can live experiences in a physical and not physical
dimension, erasing memories of slow times of daily living. The contemporary city is, as
Giddens argues (Giddens, 1990), stretched in space and time.An example is NYLON
(New York - London), unified transnational space designed by academics and
mainstream media: the annual flow of passengers on the London - New York air route,
which currently is the busiest route in the world, is the expression of a set of economic,
social and cultural interactions between the two urban centres, a vast urbanity which is
the basis of a rebirth of the two cities, both developed after years of decline, hosting
rich and heterogeneous immigrant populations that contributed to the vitality of their
6
Hypertext is text displayed on a computer or other electronic device with references (hyperlinks)
to other text that the reader can immediately access, usually by a mouse click or keypress
sequence. Hypertext is the underlying concept defining the structure of the World Wide Web,
making it an easy-to-use and flexible format to share information over the internet platform.

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culture and economy (Burdett and Kanai, 2006). The experiment of a city as a result of
two purely geographical urban centres is not new: during 80‘s the mayors of Milano and
Torino dreamed the meta-city called MITO, a continuous urban form within the same
urbanized area, the vast megalopolis extending in northwest padana valley of Italy7
.The
proposal of Franco Purini at the Biennale of Architecture in Venice (2006), at the Italian
pavilion, follows the same philosophy: he designed a new city, located between Verona
and Mantova, near the intersection of railway European corridors Lisbon-Kiev and
Berlin-Palermo, called VEMA. This is a total experiment, which explores every area of
urban planning: VEMA summarizes and proposes, in a more complex structural key,
embedded in European and global dynamics, the urban world of the padana valley,
marked by a strong environmental and architectural uniformity, contradicted by specific,
subtle differences and animated by powerful monumental presences (Purini, Marzot
and Sacchi, 2006). VEMA aims to become, in its whole, an out-and-out think tank, a
mental engine of society, through the application of the ―three T‘s‖ theory by Richard
Florida (Florida, 2002), namely talent, technology and tolerance: the first one clearly
understood in the creative sense, the second one mainly in the computer science
aspect, the third one in a social sense and, specifically, open to diversity.
The contemporary city has developed the ability to build its three-dimensional image
through powerful spatial representations, searching for a new language and a new
expression, which is closely dependent on technology, real urban high-impact utopias
towards social, emotional and cultural imaginary, far away from everyday reality.
Opportunities are offered by large voids left by the end of industrialization city
processes, in large areas in different parts of central Europe, namely urban
transformations through which rebalance the physical and functional structures of the
existing city. Time, the fourth dimension in urban design projects, seems to be an
elusive variable, flowing faster if technology that feeds it is high-speed and advanced,
difficult to harness in a grid of predetermined factors, but capable of altering the
physical enjoyment of urban places. Time, evolving through daily physical forms of the
city, is linked to personal clocks of individuals – timetables, agendas, rhythms - and to
modalities through which, during daytime and at night, the city offers itself to people,
able to give services and to amaze at the same time. This duality in the contemporary
world is strongly influenced by technological innovation that turns urban spaces into
highly sophisticated and competitive places, in a global sense. But time is also
intended as genius saeculi8
, the spirit of time, the dominant spirit of our contemporary
age, able to change the normal perception of things and of the whole world. The city,
the place of humanity and society par excellence, is the truest physical representation
of inner-time universe.
7
The growth patterns of the last two decades, however, show that MITO does not really exists,
although the two cities show the presence of forms of economic and functional interdependence
and are supposed to be further influenced by the high-speed railway line under construction in this
part of Europe.
8
Spiritof time, Zeitgeist in German, is an expression adopted in the eighteenth century philosophy
which indicates the dominant cultural trend in a certain historical period. The term is found almost
unchanged in a sentence of Mephistopheles in "Faust" by Johann Wolfgang Goethe (Was ihr den
Geist der Zeiten heißt –it has been the spirit of times), but it is mainly known in the field of analytical
philosophy of history, through Hegel thought and his lectures on the subject. The concept of
genius saeculi is used in this paper referred to social and cultural practices related to a specific
context.

549
LOOKING FOR BEAUTY AND URBAN WELLBEING
In the contemporary city it is possible to identify four dimensions related to different
ways to experience and enjoy urban places: real city, living city, imagined city, dreamed
city. The living city does not necessarily coincide with the real city: everyone, in fact,
daily lives, passes through, uses spaces and places inside the city, but everyone, in a
unique way, composes each day his own city, defining the mesh of paths and
connections, based on his place of residence, his working time and life, choosing
entertainment and leisure places on his habits and needs. Everyone moves in an urban
endless continuum, where public aspects, related to relationships, sharing,
participation, social practices, mix up with private aspects, related to individuality,
diversity, lifestyles. Everyone is inclined to build his own neighborhood, drawing in the
real city a tailor-made city, a city a la carte. So the boundary between reality and
image/imagery is increasingly blurred: dreams, fashion, myths, illusions, desires have
become powerful factors in shaping the real city. No longer, therefore, a city of
numbers, multitudes, actors, entrepreneurs, interests, according to a Cartesian and
overhead model.The urban planning culture today, more than ever, is committed to
respond to a demand of beauty and attractiveness, both in its physical and
morphological dimension, offering attractive models of transformation of places
throught huge, futuristic, powerful symbolic-architectures, self-expression of a specific
language design and strong visual sign in the urban landscape. The mayors of many
Italian and European cities establish a direct relationship with the renowned architects -
so-called archistars (Lo Ricco and Micheli, 20039
) – in charge of performing major
public works or spectacular infrastructures, because their implementation is considered
exceptional and therefore it follows special procedures. Trade journals, but also mass
divulgation magazines, tend to evaluate and enhance projects as such, its intrinsic
value rather than its relationship with the existing built environment. The most significant
evidence of new urban centrality are represented, as well as from established structures
such as theaters, cinemas, museums, parks, also from new forms of entertainment
shops - shopping centres that also offer recreational activities and games - or
edutainment places - places of entertainment related to education - which require to
come out the isolation and the puntual location in order to access the network, which is
the city. The cityscape - physical landscape of the city - thus assumes new
connotations, more ultramodern, technologically functional, projected towards the
conquest of the coming future. At the same time public spaces needs to host new
representations of leisure, entertainment, consumption, flanerie, in order to satisfy a
wide dimension of pleasure, expression of freedom, all rights and all needs. The
mindscape(Amendola, 1997) - symbolic and mental landscape of the city - materializing
into physical forms within the city, becomes synonymous of a widespread urban
weelbeing demand, intended both individual and collective coexistence, through wide
forms of social security. Security has always been regarded as the essence of the city,
already detectable in the fresco by Ambrogio Lorenzetti (1338-40) depicting the
―Allegory of Good Government‖, considered the most faithful description of the Middle
Age ideal city, the happy, beautiful and prosperous city. He puts an angel over the city,
9
This interesting essay outlines details of a rising inexorable phenomenon, in the world of
Architecture: the term "spettacolo" (show business) refers to the jet-set cool atmosphere and the
copyright on the word "archistar" is an expression derived from the fusion between marketing and
culture, as well as the transformation of identity into a commercial brand which are dominant
elements in the contemporary economic society.

14th
550
Securitas, who brings a scroll on which it is written: «…senza paura ognuom franco
camini».
Contemporary public spaces, places of collective coexistence, are more and more
linked to globalization phenomena: time-space acceleration, multi-presence,
dissolution of personal relationships, space of flows, new information and
communication systems, experiences related not to sites but to images, way of quick,
visual, not physical knowledge, loss of old solidarity forms and knowledge (family,
community) and birth of new ones (distance and confidence), different and non-fixed
scale social places. They are scenarios of individuality, where the social dimension
doesn‘t exist anymore, «the non-place urban realm» (Webber, 1964)as defined by
Melvin Webber. Thus it is very clear and effective the distinction introduced by Marco
Cenzatti and Margaret Crawford (Cenzatti and Crawford, 1993) of «quasi-public space»
and «public quasi-space». The first ones, shopping malls, stations, airports and
convention centers, are private places but open to public use, accessible to all people
who have a credit card or can buy and spend money: they express a new form of social
space, something between the domestic and public space, with a strong mechanism of
inclusion and often, only formally, similar to squares. The second ones are sons of new
communication networks, electronic mail, fax, modem, telephone, TV and have no
relation between physical place and social experience: they create a new way of
looking at the city, not a static organization of physical objects around one centre or
more centres, but organization of networks, often invisible, able to multiply the
possibilities of communication and interaction at a distance and to eliminate the need
for a physical place. They represent new forms of place generated by the media and
increasingly sophisticated technologies, which promote an home-culture service and
contribute to the loss of all possibilities offered by interaction and conflict that generate
social growth.
However, it is just in the public space, the physical place of human relationship
between individuals, that the contemporary city can try to define its identity, because it
is the place where everyone can exercise the experience of autonomy and uniqueness
and at the same time of community, local and global, diversity, comparison,
hybridization, knowledge, contamination, socialization made of speech, listening,
game, rules, transgression, recognition. The place, therefore, where every individual
can be, where freedom and democracy are put into practice, where values of humanity
are exalted (Scandurra, 2003).
CONTEMPORARY HISTORIC CITY
Today half of the world‘s population lives in cities. The United Nation report ―State of the
World‘s Cities 2006/7‖ calculates that 75% of the planet in 2050 will live in cities, while
just a century ago only 10% lived in urban areas. In the light ofthe urban scenery
complexity emerging at the beginning of the millennium, it is clear how the
contemporary city has to reinvent and improve itself, acting on the growing demand
expressed by its inhabitants, trying to bridge the gap between «methods of thought and
methods of feeling» (Giedion, 1948) occurred in the previous century, trying to achieve
an intellectual, political and emotionalunityof culture. Such intervention requires
interrelation of micro with macro-social, of quality with quantity, through the use of
different and cross-learning knowledge related to urban planning discipline, in order to

551
reconcile physical city aspects to those related to the living cityand the subject
(intervention on the city) with the object (community).
But how to design places that can generate affectivity and satisfy forms of desire for
collective life within a complex global society that tends to level differences, that denies
forms of solidarity because it encourages isolation and loneliness? It is obvious that it‘s
not possible todesign places accessible to everyone, to all existing human diversity,
because exclusions should be inevitable. The paradigm of contemporary urban theory
is to reverse the classical concept of public space, intended as a place where people
gather to discuss the facts of the city, according to an ideal of political life based on
dialogue and reasoning, and consider urban place as a comparing space between
differentpeople with the same rights, inside which everyone feels free and safe having
dealings with others. The project of agora, namely the place of public-private urban
sociality, and ecclesia, namely the public-public place of political power, must be
closely linked to the oikos, namely private place of home and family, because the public
decision affects in some waythe private life, and at the same time the private sphere
does not guarantee socialization of individuals (Castoriadis, 1998).In addition to being
regarded as the first aggregation element in the overall design of the city, the house
must be systematized with all the functions of the city. In European urban culture, since
the late twentieth century, life style and behaviour of the inhabitants depend very largely
on the geographic location of their houses, which is no longer regarded as the place of
permanent residence but as an extension of the city: houses must therefore be able to
meet the same requirements of beauty, usability, attractiveness, safety that
contemporary city has to satisfy, must be technologically equipped, through an efficient
system of networks and of energy savings of consumption.This need is reflected in an
increasingly housing disorder: the upper-class housing estates, gated communities,
restored blocks in the historical centre inhabited by bourgeoisie, degraded (sometimes
historical) central areas, suburban middle-class neighbourhoods, popular quarters
without services, semi-central autonomous districts, dormitoryslats, emergency houses
in the extreme periphery, barracks. The unequal spatial distribution of residences not
only draws a physical geography of the city but also a social geography which is
projected into the material concreteness of the city.
It is necessary to look at the city and its genius loci through new eyes, «the question of
whether you can see and think differently from the wayyou think and see, is essential to
continue to look at and reflect»(Foucault, 1984). This means to start a real
epistemological revolution, which aims to establish a new knowledge able to
understand our inner-world, consisting of our thinking and our feeling, the genius
saeculi, that guides us in reflecting these thought and feeling in the historical built
environment. The parameter is no longer Man, with capital M, intended as in traditional
normative and universalistic models of Humanism, but people, with the lowercase p
and in a plural sense, which means different populationsliving together in the designed
city, intended for what they really are and not for what they should be. The imperative is
to design the city with people in mind, having people as datum-point, getting into the
diverse humanity that constitutes the contemporary social world, in order to answer to
the growing desire to live and enjoy the city, as an expression of that «right to the city»
mentioned by Henri Lefebvre (Lefebvre, 1968) forty years ago.
So the historic city could be the instrument of a new genesis, an order-setting element
inside complexity because it can collect and contain all instances of the contemporary
world in the consolidated urban grain. Genius saeculi, the spirit of time, requires an

14th
552
update of public spaces content and collective themes, which are read and assigned to
the historical forms from people who live and inhabit those places, and the insertion of
new meanings, new values, new forms of environmental exploitation. The historic city is
able to translate this need and to express it through the continuity of architectural
language, inherited from the past, and through identity values of community, according
to a sustainable model that has already demonstrated its effectiveness through history,
adapting itself andcreating layer upon layer, century after century. It can act as a
centrifugal force to which all peripheral appendages converge, in order to connect all
public spaces into one network, defining a system of sequences from the urban centre
to outdoor districts, activating regeneration and rehabilitation processes of degraded
areas, defining new focuses, becoming a hierarchical and scalarprinciple. It is able to
generate a spatial oneness, in which different parts interact through the interconnection
of public spaces, updated and adapted to new forms of social life, forming an evolved
narrative plot, turned to a new ethical, functional and aestheticaldimension. The historic
city is able to awake the sense of belonging of the contemporary man to the world that
he has builthimself, which is the purest reflection of his social evolution. Because the
world that history has consigned us is a long processresult, bound to change again
and again by introducing new variables, where the only constant is and has always
been man. And it is only through a comprehensive and clear knowledge of the human
real world that it is possible to return to work on the city and to identify the meaning and
value of all things. «For a split second, between the loss of everything that I knew
beforeand the purchase of all that I would have learned later, I was able to embrace in a
single thought the world of things as they were and things as they could have been,
and I realized that a unique system held everything» (Calvino, 1967).
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Amendola, G. (1997) ―La città postmoderna. Magie e paure della metropoli
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Amin, A. and Thrift N. (2001) ―Cities. Reimagining the Urban‖, Polity Press, Cambridge
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urbanistica DOSSIERonline
006
Rivista
monografica
online
ISBN
978-88-7603-101-4
INUEdizioni
CITTÀ OPEN SOURCE
SPAZIO PUBBLICO
NETWORK
INNOVAZIONE SOCIALE
a cura di
Ilaria Vitellio
ATTI WORKSHOP
BIENNALE SPAZIO PUBBLICO 2013

Presentazione
MARIO SPADA
Introduzione
ILARIA VITELLIO
L’Infoscape Open Source delle Città
SALVATORE IACONESI, ORIANA PERSICO
La Città Open Source
ILARIA VITELLIO
Multiwalks. Passeggiate artistiche nelle città europee
DAMIANO RAZZOLI
Performing Media per l’Urban Experience. La via ludico-partecipativa alla cittadinanza educativa
CARLO INFANTE, SAVERIO MASSARO
Il suono dello spazio pubblico: camminare e ascoltare per rivivere la città
CAMILLA CROSTA
ITI Itinerari Turistici Industriali
CATERINA TIMPANARO
In viaggio attraverso geografie emozionali e paesaggi sonori urbani: la mappa sonora tenera di Firenze
ANTONELLA RADICCHI
STAMPAXI+
SARDARCH, FRANCESCO COCCO, MATTEO LECIS COCCO ORTU, NICOLÒ FENU
Il Progetto Artena
ANGELO ABBATE, ANTONIO CAPERNA, ANGELO GENTILI, GIACOMO GRAZIOSI, ANGELICA FORTUZZI, GUGLIELMO MINERVINO,
STEFANO SERAFINI
Sequenze urbane. Unità minime di conversAzione sullo spazio pubblico
MATTIA LEONE, DANILO IACONE, VITTORIO SANTANGELO, FRANCESCA NICOLAIS, VALERIA SCIALÒ, GUIDO ACAMPA
Spazio pubblico figitale: una convergenza tra luoghi e comunità attive
GIUSEPPE ROCCASALVA, SIMONA VALENTI
Mapping Marina
LORENZO GRUSSU, PATRIZIA SULIS
INDICE
1 | SOFTWARE CITY
01
03
05
11
16
20
24
29
33
40
48
60
55
66

El re-uso como clave para una regeneración urbana sostenible
PATRIZIA DI MONTE, IGNACIO GRÁVALOS
citymakers GT, produrre giocando!
TIZIANA AMICUZI, GIULIO PASCALI
Urban hacktivism e locative media. Strategie di riappropriazione dei paesaggi dell’abbandono
ALESSANDRO CARIELLO, ROSSELLA FERORELLI, SMALL: SOFT METROPOLITAN ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE LAB
[im]possible living
DANIELA GALVANI, ANDREA SESTA
MICROSPAZI-MI: crowdsourcing e crowdmapping per la qualificazione partecipata e sostenibile dello spazio pubblico latente
MARCO VEDOÀ
La governance tra progettazione partecipata e metodologie open: il progetto “E tu cosa ci vedi?”
ANDREA CECCHIN, ANNA AGOSTINI, MICHELE SBRISSA, MATTEO BRUNATI
EMERGING FORMS OF LIVING COLLECTIVELY THE CITY.
The experience of LOCAL SQUARES in community-driven spaces in Madrid
GIULIA MOLINENGO, LENA HUMMEL
NON RISERVATO dal web alla piazza e ritorno
NICOLA CIANCIO, ASSOCIAZIONE CULTURALE EX-VOTO MILANO, GIOVANNA CRISAFULLI
Riformulazione urbana attraverso nuovi spazi di co-working
DANIEL ESGUEVILLAS
Il Sabato alla Bovisa
DAVIDE FASSI, ROBERTA MOTTER
Spazi urbani e vita pubblica. Azioni ed esperimenti di “social engagement”
LUISA BRAVO
Piattaforme ibride per moltiplicare le possibilità: diventare segugi urbani con CITY-HOUND
Nina Artioli, Alessandra Glorialanza, Eliana Saracino (T SPOON)
INDICE
72
79
81
87
88
92
95
105
100
109
114
119
2 | CITY 2.0

INDICE
Coltivando. L'orto conviviale al Politecnico di Milano
DAVIDE FASSI, ALESSANDRO SACHERO
Agriculture as peace infrastructure
MIRKO ANDOLINA
Un frutteto a Metropoliz
MICHELA PASQUALI
Nuove pratiche di riconfigurazione dello spazio pubblico per contrastare gli effetti del cambiamento climatico
VALENTINA CRUPI
La generazione CO- e i processi di riqualificazione del Terzo Paesaggio
DANIELA PANARIELLO
Sensibilità collettiva e smart cities.
Una proposta di metodo per tenere bassi i costi dell’errore nel progetto dello spazio pubblico
ALICE ALBANESE
Intercultural garden: strumento per costruire appartenenza
ELIANA SARACINO
Mappare l’interazione sociale negli spazi verdi: strumenti di visualizzazione analitica
GIUSEPPE ROCCASALVA, WALTER CAVALLARO
La prossimità dell’agricoltura periurbana tra criticità e potenzialità; quale prospettiva?
GINA FURIA, LUIGI NEFASTO, DANIELA D’ARGENIO
Tecnonatura: processi di Land Art come generatori di energia
ELISA CRISTIANA CATTANEO
125
129
135
138
142
146
151
157
156
162
3 | RE-IMAGINING THE COMMONS FIELDS

5INDICE
Sezione A. Architetti e ingegneri / la Categoria 1. La città sociale
A.1.1_Estonoesunsolar_Patrizia di Monte, Ignacio Gravasol
A.1.2_Una tartaruga in Piazza Venerio-Udine_Gruppo Bedawang_Luca Gremese, Luigi Montalbano, Alessandro Verona
A.1.3_MACH MANN HEIM Urban Innovation Platform Empowering Mannheim's Citizens_Daniela Patti, Radostina Radulova,
Esaú Acosta Pérez, Mauro Gil-Fournier Esquerra, Miguel Jaenicke Fontao, Wulf Kramer, Franziska Bettac, Leo Grosswendt,
Jaro Eiermann
A.1.4_Paesaggi (ex)industriali - dalla dismissione alla città_Marino la Torre, Alberto Ulisse
A.1.5_Piazza Vittorio Partecipata_Franca Marina Fresa, Ilaria Rossi Doria, Sonia Sabbadini
Sezione A. Architetti e ingegneri / Categoria 2. La città Open Source
A.2.1_Un Central Park tra Torino e Milano? Uno spazio pubblico per Expo 2015_Andrea Rolando, Stefano Di Vita
A.2.2_Catania in Realtà Aumentata_Giordano Salvatore, Rosario Rapisarda
A.2.3_City-Hound: social network per la trasformazione temporanea degli spazi urbani sottoutilizzati_Nina Artioli,
Alessandra Glorialanza, Eliana Saracino_TSPOON environment architecture
A.2.4_Vitamina C: manifestazione fisica din una identità virtuale_Stefano Piraccini
A.2.5_Share the City!_Fabio Mancini
Sezione B. Studenti e altre discipline / Categoria 1. La città sociale
B.1.1_WUNDERKAMMER. Recupero degli ex magazzini fluviali di Ferrara _ Aps Basso profilo
B.1.2_1xCoworkerSTORE: la vetrina di maker_Mod-o
B.1.3_Dal Borgo al Carcere. La riappropriazione dei luoghi attraverso la riabilitazione dell’uomo_Gionata Rizzolini, Derek
Andrea Piemonti
B.1.4_Riqualificazione architettonica ed energetica a basso costo partecipata degli spazi occupati della città: la Casa
delle Donne “Lucha y Siesta”_Alessandra Marsiglia
B.1.5_Progetto “Ex Prima Classe”_Margherita Belgrano, Mattia Galliano
Sezione B. Studenti e altre discipline / Categoria 2. La città Open Source
B.2.1_FLPP–IL FRONTE DI LIBERAZIONE DEI PIZZINI PIZZONI: la rivoluzione che arriva dal futuro_Tamalacà
B.2.2_ChipIn. Un gioco urbano per sincronizzare la città_gruppo Tulup_Emanuela Caponera, Federica Fava,
Dorotea Ottaviani, Elena Peruzzi
B.2.3_PopHub, una piattaforma di mappatura e riattivazione per innovatori urbani_Silvia Sivo, Luca Langella
B.2.4_SEETY Milano: strumento di partecipazione all’illuminazione urbana_Daria Casciani
B.2.5_Milano Stòri. Creazione di un hub culturale dove i flussi urbani diventano storia, memoria e azione creativa_Eugenia
Montagnini, Alice Selene Boni
167
181
194
205
4 | CALL FOR IDEAS

114
Spazi urbani e vita pubblica.
Azioni ed esperimenti di “social engagement”
Nell’era della tecnologia digitale, la percezio-
ne e la conoscenza della città e dei suoi spazi
è in parte scollegata dalla sperimentazione
fisica diretta: i cyber-utenti, come veri e propri
flaneur, interagiscono nel web 2.0 in modi e
forme del tutto simili a quelle consolidate nello
spazio fisico reale. Questa fruizione virtuale del
mondo ha progressivamente rilanciato una rin-
novata esigenza di vivere e godere fisicamente
gli spazi della città: le azioni informali di design
urbano alla piccola scala e gli interventi spon-
tanei di micro-urbanistica, sempre più pervasivi
nella pratica urbanistica, hanno trovato terreno
fertile di visibilità e diffusione attraverso il web.
Si tratta per lo più di pratiche di condivisione,
trasformazione, appropriazione e partecipazio-
ne dello spazio, che mettono insieme pubblico
e privato in una rinnovata uguaglianza urbana
e sociale. Spesso i risultati sono temporanei ma
hanno la capacità di imporsi fortemente, dal
punto di vista emotivo e partecipativo, median-
te una promozione basata anche sul social-net-
working, perché in grado di dimostrare ciò che
la città potrebbe essere riattivando un coinvol-
gimento sociale dei cittadini.
Ripensare la città e lo spazio pubblico
Negli ultimi decenni, nei saggi di molti autori e in
generale nella letteratura relativi ai sistemi urbani, il
termine “città” è stato spesso accompagnato da un
aggettivo, attraverso il quale si intendeva connota-
re, dare consistenza e specificità alla sua condizio-
ne fisica o teorica: la città è stata, di volta in volta,
bella, ordinata, ricca, efficiente, invisibile, disfatta,
dispersa, diffusa, infinita, immateriale e, strettamente
legata alla cultura dominante, pure multiculturale,
globale, virtuale, universale, in rete, digitale. Tanti
aggettivi che hanno progressivamente conferito alla
città un’essenza tendenziosa, avviando un inarre-
stabile processo di perdita di identità (Purini, 2004).
Non solo, tanti aggettivi che hanno reso evidente,
da un lato, la difficoltà di comprendere e di definire
compiutamente la complessità dell’oggetto “città”,
nella sua dimensione contemporanea, e l’evoluzione
dei suoi valori, come esito della crisi della moderni-
tà; dall’altro la mancanza di un convincimento forte
nell’interpretazione delle trasformazioni politiche,
economiche e sociali che hanno investito la società e
il mondo nel secolo scorso (Indovina, 2006).
A questa difficoltà teorica di tipo disciplinare si è
aggiunta, già a partire dagli anni Novanta, una
difficoltà operativa dell’azione progettuale, generata
dall’irresistibile pervasività di una pratica burocratica
sempre più basata sull’inflazione normativa e sulla
ridondanza delle verifiche quantitative. L’affastellarsi
delle regole, dei piani e delle norme ha prodotto una
progressiva caduta di legittimazione dell’urbanisti-
ca, come strumento, ed ha aperto la strada ad una
stagione di sostanziale impotenza dell’urbanistica
praticata, imprigionata e quasi paralizzata da una
struttura fatta di vincoli, divieti e procedure sempre
più complesse e standardizzate, in cui poco spazio
veniva lasciato alla componente creativa.
Mentre i ritmi dell’azione urbanistica, teorica e
pratica, progressivamente rallentavano, perdendosi
nella gestione dei processi, anche a seguito della crisi
del welfare state e dei modelli di governance, le città
iniziavano a cambiare e ad aumentare la loro com-
plessità, a seguito di profonde e rapide trasformazio-
ni: nuovi gruppi sociali, nuovi conflitti urbani, nuovi
problemi di cittadinanza e di coesione, di marginaliz-
zazione e di esclusione, nuove condizioni di disparità
e d’insicurezza, nuovi stili e modi di vita.
All’inizio del nuovo Millennio è apparsa indispensa-
bile una penetrante riflessione critica a tutto campo,
a cui accompagnare politiche innovative, volte a
sperimentare modalità di intervento meno convenzio-
nali, basate su una capacità tutta nuova di ascoltare,
di comunicare e di condividere. Una riflessione,
sviluppata da storici, sociologi, antropologi, geografi,
economisti, linguisti, filosofi, scrittori, artisti, architetti,
urbanisti, ingegneri, imprenditori ed amministratori
locali, che ha dovuto necessariamente interrogarsi
sulla ri-definizione della città, declinata attraverso
le nuove istanze e le molteplici espressioni riferite al
contemporaneo.
L’elemento che ha rappresentato un punto di rottura

115
che è piuttosto difficile oggi ricostruire e comprendere
quando questo passaggio è avvenuto. Sappiamo
solo che è diventato ineludibile perché troppo eviden-
te per essere ignorato. Le pubbliche amministrazioni,
avendo inteso la potenzialità di questo fenomeno,
tale da imporsi come risorsa preziosa, hanno iniziato
a promuovere bandi e attività di sostegno alle libere
forme associative, vale a dire forme semplici di ag-
gregazione civica. In tempo di crisi, nella precarietà
del lavoro nelle sue vecchie e consolidate strutture,
le nuove generazioni hanno così trovato forme smart
di micro-impresa, legate alla costruzione di una rin-
novata consapevolezza e cultura delle città mediante
progetti che trovano spazio di finanziamento in Euro-
pa e visibilità nel mondo.
In questa complessa operazione non sempre gli
architetti, e i progettisti in generale, hanno avuto un
ruolo: prendersi cura della strada di fronte alla pro-
pria casa, promuovere campagne di intervento per
la riqualificazione di un giardino o di un parcheggio,
organizzare eventi creativi di uso e consumo comu-
nitario dello spazio pubblico non richiede nessuna
specifica competenza.
Everyday Urbanism ovvero la quotidianità dell’ur-
banistica
Il padiglione degli Stati Uniti, alla Biennale di Ar-
chitettura “Common ground” (2012) ha celebrato
le azioni di attivismo urbano di tipo bottom-up,
mediante la presentazione di 124 progetti (tuttora
consultabili nel sito www.spontaneousinterventions.
org/interventions), sul tema “Spontaneous Interven-
tions: Design Actions for the Common Good”. Il
progetto di esposizione, curato da Cathy Lang Ho e
promosso dall’Institute for Urban Design di New York,
organizzazione non-profit presieduta da Michael
Sorkin (Sorkin, 1992), ha valorizzato efficacemente le
azioni informali di design urbano alla piccola scala
e gli interventi spontanei di micro-urbanistica pre-
sentando gli esiti di processi sviluppati anche senza
uno specifico progetto firmato da un architetto o
approvato dalla pubblica amministrazione3
: nel loro
carattere instabile e amorfo queste azioni di do-it-
yourself urbanism o tactical urbanism (Lydon, 2011)
sono espressione di un’esigenza di partecipazione
democratica e di un desiderio di libertà, che vive e si
alimenta anche attraverso le reti sociali stabilite a li-
vello virtuale. Molto spesso esse prevedono interventi
“lighter, quicker, cheaper”, come definiti dagli esperti
di placemaking dell’organizzazione no-profit “Project
for Public Spaces” (www.pps.org), con base a New
York. Nell’ottica di agire in proprio per il benessere
3 Il padiglione USA è stato premiato con una Menzio-
ne speciale dalla giuria della 13. Mostra Internazionale di
architettura, Biennale di Venezia 2012. Dal 24 maggio 2013
(e fino al 1 settembre) la mostra “Spontaneous Interventions”
è stata presentata per la prima volta negli Stati Uniti presso il
Chicago Cultural Center. I contenuti sono stati aggiornati con
84 progetti, di cui alcuni dall’area di Chicago e altri selezionati
dall’esposizione di Venezia, e con una “outdoor living room”
nel Millennium Park, progettata da MAS Studio.
e di istantaneo superamento degli strumenti consoli-
dati del passato è stato la costituzione del cyber spa-
ce delle reti (Mitchell, 1996). Alla complessità fisica e
fisiologica dell’organismo urbano, si è sovrapposto,
in forme sempre più pervasive ed efficaci, il layer
delle comunità virtuali, in cui gli utenti, come veri e
propri flaneur, esplorano la riproduzione digitale del
mondo: passeggiano nelle piazze, visitano musei,
comprano nei mercati interattivi, dialogano con le
istituzioni, si incontrano nelle agorà telematiche dei
social networks, interagiscono con amici e scono-
sciuti, proprio come avviene nello spazio fisico reale.
Oggi un quarto della popolazione mondiale (circa 2
miliardi di persone1
) è connesso alla rete. La tecnolo-
gia ha prodotto, in tempi brevissimi rispetto a quelli
attraverso i quali la città fisica costruisce se stessa, un
vero e proprio passaggio d’epoca, definendo una
nuova conformazione dell’urbano, fruibile a tutti e
a vari livelli. Le pubbliche amministrazioni hanno
dovuto adeguare i loro modelli di funzionamento
alle nuove esigenze richieste dalle cyber communities,
costruendo piattaforme di comunicazione e dialogo
con i cittadini e gli utenti, che a vario titolo esplorano
le reti istituzionali, e mettendo a disposizione strut-
ture sempre aggiornate per la condivisione di dati e
informazioni (open data2
).
Così mentre la fruizione della città e dei suoi servi-
zi, pubblici e privati, è diventata sempre più facile,
attraverso anche i dispositivi mobili, l’interazione
sociale ha creato connessioni fra i diversi utenti, che
dal mondo virtuale si spostano al mondo fisico e vi-
ceversa: il sistema delle reti digitali non ha prodotto,
come inizialmente molti teorici sostenevano, indivi-
dualizzazione e isolamento, anzi, ha rilanciato con
forza una socialità vivace e una rinnovata esigenza
di vivere e godere fisicamente gli spazi della città.
In questo senso, di fronte all’inerzia delle pubbliche
amministrazioni nel gestire l’azione sul territorio, è
cresciuta l’esigenza, da parte dei cittadini, di rientrare
in possesso della città, per modificarne lo spazio di
relazione della vita collettiva, per migliorarlo o adat-
tarlo a nuovi usi.
Diversi soggetti, come singoli o come associazioni,
come tecnici o semplicemente cittadini, hanno comin-
ciato a ragionare sulle potenzialità di trasformazione,
ri-uso, riqualificazione di edifici, aree abbandonate,
di piazze e spazi pubblici, hanno presentato progetti
e immaginato relazioni per poterli realizzare, hanno
reso pubbliche le loro opinioni, attraverso blogs e
social networks, hanno sensibilizzato le coscienze su
temi di attualità, portando avanti petizioni e manife-
stando il proprio dissenso, sono cioè diventati attori
protagonisti della scena urbana, capaci di lavorare
in un’ottica attenta e costruttiva, perché radicati nel
territorio e nelle sue problematicità. Dal virtuale al
reale il passo è stato breve e quasi immediato, tanto
1 Fonte: Internet World Stats – www.internetworldstats.com/
stats.htm.
2 Si veda, a titolo di esempio, il progetto “Open data” del
Comune di Bologna: http://dati.comune.bologna.it/

116
della collettività, le risorse economiche sono limitate
mentre la creatività e la cooperazione trovano ampio
spazio: i cittadini, intervenendo come principali per-
formers, attraverso progetti di tipo pop-up, investono
il loro tempo e le loro capacità con generosità disin-
teressata, caratterizzata, quasi sempre, anche da una
componente ludica che invita alla partecipazione,
senza distinzioni di età, e diventa motore di consen-
so, partecipazione e di approvazione. L’attenzione
nell’individuare e scoprire potenzialità urbane non
va rivolta solo agli spazi riconoscibili come luoghi di
aggregazione pubblica, ma anche a luoghi banali,
aree vuote non compiutamente progettate o a spazi
non immediatamente percepibili per un uso collet-
tivo, come marciapiedi, cortili, aree di parcheggio
(Ben-Joseph, 2012), che generalmente sono utilizzati
per usi privati o commerciali. Questi luoghi possono
diventare o sono diventati spazi di attività collettiva,
legati alle molteplici esigenze della vita comunitaria,
anche se solo per alcune ore del giorno o per alcuni
giorni della settimana o del mese. I risultati, spesso
temporanei, hanno avuto la capacità di imporsi forte-
mente sulla comunità, dal punto di vista emotivo e
partecipativo, perché in grado di dimostrare ciò che
la città potrebbe essere riattivando un coinvolgimento
sociale dei cittadini.
L’origine di queste pratiche di attivismo urbano si può
rintracciare in buona parte in esperienze Nord Euro-
pee, come complemento di politiche promosse dalle
pubbliche amministrazioni per il miglioramento della
mobilità urbana e per la valorizzazione dello spazio
pubblico di relazione. Dalle esperienze del woonerf
in Olanda alla fine degli anni Sessanta (legittimate e
regolamentate a partire dal 1976) alle Home Zones
tedesche e inglesi degli anni Settanta (Biddulph,
2001) - sperimentate anche negli Stati Uniti a partire
dal 2002 – in Europa inizia un graduale processo
di ridefinizione concettuale delle strade, intese non
più come luoghi dei flussi a priorità carrabile, ma
sempre più organizzate e progettate per una percor-
ribilità pedonale e ciclabile, quindi intese come spazi
pubblici e come occasioni di vita pubblica. Oggi
diverse città europee hanno rinnovato la loro im-
magine pedestrian-friendly, promuovendo politiche
mirate alla riduzione del traffico veicolare e avviando
progetti e azioni di condivisione della strada con altri
tipi di utenza. L’eredità teorica di Jan Gehl 4
(1971),
e di ben noti studiosi americani come Jane Jacobs
(1961) e William H. Whyte (1980), è tornata così
prepotentemente alla ribalta: guardare la città e i
suoi spazi attraverso gli occhi degli abitanti permette
di evidenziarne le potenzialità di trasformazione per
favorire l’interazione e coesione sociale.
Bruxelles, secondo una ricerca del 2011 dell’azienda
4 Jan Gehl rappresenta sicuramente una figura di riferi-
mento nel panorama europeo: il suo lavoro, dal famoso “Life
between buildings” (1971) fino al documentario “The human
scale” (2012) - presentato in Italia alla Mostra Internazionale
di Architettura di Venezia “Common ground” – è l’esito di una
approfondita ricerca sull’uso dello spazio pubblico. Si veda:
http://www.gehlarchitects.com/
dei navigatori TomTom, è la città più congestionata
d’Europa: la velocità media del 70% del traffico vei-
colare non supera i 5 km/h. Ma negli ultimi 10 anni
il traffico delle biciclette è aumentato dall’1 al 4%,
come risposta ad una esigenza di riappropriazione
dello spazio e a un desiderio di cambiamento. Un
documentario dal titolo “Brussels Express”5
racconta
le imprese eroiche di questi bike messengers, che
percorrono distanze fino a 180 Km al giorno, defi-
nendo un trend che trae origine dalla percezione e
fruizione dell’ambiente urbano alla scala umana e
sociale.
A Parigi, dopo la sperimentazione del programma
“Condividere la strada” avviata nel 2012 nel 10° ar-
rondissement, l’amministrazione cittadina ha imposto
su un terzo delle vie urbane, a partire da settembre
2013, il limite di velocità di 30 Km/h: saranno inte-
ressati dal provvedimento un centinaio di zone resi-
denziali, 1300 scuole della capitale francese e anche
alcuni assi di scorrimento declassati dal municipio
a strade di quartiere. Un’ulteriore limitazione della
velocità, a 20 km/h, interesserà 23 “zone d'incontro”,
in prossimità di centri commerciali, scuole e universi-
tà - come il quartiere Marais, dove i pedoni e i ciclisti
che vanno a passeggiare o a fare shopping hanno
sempre la precedenza - che si andranno ad aggiun-
gere alle 15 già esistenti. Parigi potrà dunque contare
su 560 chilometri di strade a velocità moderata, il
37% del totale della rete stradale cittadina, e divente-
rà quindi il paradiso dei ciclisti e dei pedoni6
.
Nel 2008 la Monacelli Press di New York pubblica
il volume dal titolo “Everyday urbanism”7
, a cura di
John Leighton Chase, Margaret Crawford e John
Kaliski. L’Everyday urbanism promuove un concetto
alternativo di urban design, un nuovo approccio,
basato su Lefebvre (1971) e de Certeau (1984), per
riconnettere la ricerca e il progetto dell’urbanistica
con l’esperienza umana e sociale. Tale approccio è
finalizzato da un lato ad approfondire la città esisten-
te e la vita pubblica che in essa si svolge quotidiana-
mente, secondo pratiche formali o informali (Ba-
nerjee, 2001), dall’altro a proporre nuovi e imprevisti
significati ai luoghi ordinari, intesi come parte dell’e-
veryday space, attivando una sensibilità specifica
verso un substrato di contenuti intangibili. L’Everyday
5 http://www.brusselsexpressfilm.be/
6 Attualmente a Parigi, all’interno dei 20 arrondissement, il
60% della popolazione si sposta a piedi, il 27% col trasporto
pubblico, il 7% in macchina e il 4% in bici. Il sindaco Bertrand
Delanoë ha anche chiesto al governo una modifica del codice
della strada che gli consenta di abbassare la velocità sulle
grandi arterie di scorrimento intorno alla capitale a 70 km/h.
7 Si tratta di una expanded version del volume dallo stesso ti-
tolo, pubblicato nel 1999. L’introduzione di Margaret Crawford,
nell’edizione 2008, chiarisce le origini teoriche alla base della
definizione concettuale dell’Everyday urbanism, individuando
anche studi, ricerche ed eventi che già negli anni Novanta
confluivano nella stessa direzione, con particolare riferimento
all’area di Los Angeles e del sud della California; riporta inoltre
le critiche all’EU, anche da parte di noti studiosi, per lo più ac-
cademici, che avevano probabilmente sottovalutato l’importan-
za di un fenomeno che stava crescendo al di fuori degli schemi
e delle prassi consolidate dell’urbanistica.

117
urbanism è basato non più sull’idea convenzionale di
“spazio pubblico”, morfologicamente definito e iden-
tificato, ma su una molteplicità di “publics”, legati ai
ritmi temporali e agli itinerari quotidiani degli utenti,
di tipo sia pubblico che privato, in grado di generare
multiple occasioni di vita collettiva (Bravo e Crawford,
2013). Esso lavora sia in senso bottom-up (riferita
al soggetto) che top-down (utilizzando conoscenza
e tecniche sofisticate), vale a dire sia in senso tattico
(mediante azioni informali non autorizzate dalla
pubblica amministrazione) che strategico (mediante
la formulazione di progetti e piani da parte degli enti
preposti). Uno degli esiti più soddisfacenti del volume
– scrive la Crawford – è stato il crescente entusiasmo
da parte di architetti, urbanisti, studenti, persone e
gruppi like-minded, che hanno accolto il metodo
di lavoro proposto, adottando di conseguenza un
nuovo approccio progettuale. L’Everyday urbanism
ha così dato un nome a pratiche innovative già in
corso e ha definito un concetto al quale un numero
sorprendente di persone ha potuto identificarsi. Attra-
verso la ricerca di un ordinary magic, in circostanze
che molti progettisti definirebbero poco promettenti,
l’Everyday urbanism diventa espressione di un intento
visionario di trasformazione, più di altri paradigmi
dell’urbanistica contemporanea.
Emblematica, in questo senso, è stata la recente
riqualificazione di Times Square a New York, forse
il luogo più fotografato al mondo, nell’ambito del
progetto “PlaNYC. A greener, greater New York”,
promosso a partire dal 2007 dal sindaco Michael
Bloomberg: al traffico automobilistico si è sostituito
uno straordinario spazio pubblico di circa 1,8 acri
(quasi una volta e mezzo un campo da calcio), in
grado di accogliere gli oltre 350.000 pedoni che lo
affollano ogni giorno, con molteplici aree di sosta e
una solida ed estesa infrastruttura di piste ciclabili,
accessibile attraverso una rinnovata ed efficiente rete
di bus pubblici. Questo ha significato anche un mi-
glioramento del traffico veicolare, maggior sicurezza
urbana e potenziamento della struttura commerciale.
Stessa fortuna ha avuto il progetto di trasformazione
in un parco lineare di una porzione di oltre 2 km del-
la rete ferroviaria sopraelevata “High Line” nel Man-
hattan West side village8
: avviato a seguito dall’inten-
sa attività di un gruppo di residenti, già a partire dal
1999, che si opponevano alla sua demolizione, oggi
la High Line si è imposta nell’immaginario collettivo
come luogo simbolo di una vincente politica urbana.
Molte sono le iniziative negli Stati Uniti basate su un
approccio people-oriented. Significativo in questo
senso è il progetto “Park(ing) day”, avviato a San
Francisco nel 2005 dallo studio di progettazione Re-
bar (http://rebargroup.org/). In un giorno prestabilito
dell’anno gli spazi di sosta per le automobili si tra-
sformano in spazi pubblici temporanei, in modi e for-
me estremamente creative: è l’occasione per ricoprire
l’asfalto di tappeti verdi e sistemare tavolini e sedie
di cafè e ristoranti all’aria aperta, in uno spazio ben
delimitato e separato dal traffico veicolare, mediante
interventi low-cost design. Gli attori di questa trasfor-
mazione sono artisti, progettisti e cittadini, impegnati
ad affermare la necessità di maggiore spazio urbano
per le attività della vita pubblica. L’evento ha avuto
un tale successo da essere replicato in moltissime
città in tutto il mondo, in forme indipendenti rispetto
al progetto originario ma basandosi su linee guida
condivise: il Park(ing) day del 2011 ha visto coinvolte
975 locations, 162 città, 35 paesi, 6 continenti9
.
8 Fu costruita nei primi anni Trenta, poi abbandonata nel
1980. La storia di questa straordinaria esperienza di rigenera-
zione urbana è ben documentata in David, J. and Hammond,
R. (2011), High Line. The inside story of New York City’s park in
the sky, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.
9 Anche l’Italia ha aderito al Park(ing) Day con diverse loca-
tions: nel 2009 a Roma e Firenze, nel 2010 a Fiesole, Pisa e
Alcuni esiti del progetto “Parklet” promosso a San Francisco da “Pavement to parks”, finalizzato alla creazione di luoghi di sosta e incontro, al margine di strade carrabili
(http://sfpavementtoparks.sfplanning.org/)

118
Altro esempio è il movimento “Guerrilla Gardening”:
nato a Manhattan nel 1973 dall’iniziativa di un grup-
po di residenti che, volontariamente, avevano creato
un’oasi di verde laddove prima era tutto cemento - il
primo giardino comunitario in uno spazio pubblico
- è divenuto presto il simbolo di una spontanea ribel-
lione ad un sistema che negava la possibilità di poter
coltivare in città piante e fiori. Da lì in poi la comunità
dei “guerriglieri da giardino” è cresciuta in tutto il
mondo: oggi il gruppo più forte è quello inglese, ma
le comunità locali sono fiorite ovunque, Italia inclusa.
Un nuovo modo di lavorare
Per raccontare la città contemporanea, in tutte le
sue molteplici espressioni, è necessario connettersi
con la dimensione globale e con il sistema delle reti
attraverso cui viaggiano le informazioni, tenendo in
considerazione la complessità di valori e desideri,
riflesso di una società non più assimilabile a modelli
precostituiti, e la capacità di diversi soggetti di pro-
muovere pratiche innovative in grado di conquistare
larghi consensi e visibilità. Così mentre sempre più si
affermano progetti internet-based di crowdsourcing
o crowdfunding, per la documentazione e trasfor-
mazione del territorio, dell’architettura e dello spazio
urbano, appare sempre più squilibrato il rapporto fra
l’azione legittima promossa dal governo pubblico,
di tipo top-down, e l’intervento spontaneo di tipo
bottom-up (Ring, 2013): il sistema delle regole e dei
grandi interventi viene scardinato da una nuova strut-
tura agile e fresca, basata su una volenterosa deter-
minazione a dare il proprio contributo, sulla capacità
di promuovere e utilizzare idee e strumenti creativi e
di agire in risposta ad una precisa domanda in uno
specifico contesto, potendo contare su ridotte risorse
economiche.
Appare ormai condivisa ampiamente la consa-
pevolezza che la città è un bene comune (Porrino,
2013): l’azione di trasformazione, riqualificazione
o valorizzazione di parti di essa è aperta a tutti, in
termini sia ideativi che operativi. In questo senso la
“Biennale dello spazio pubblico” ha meritoriamente
accolto e valorizzato le molteplici istanze che anima-
no e arricchiscono la disciplina urbanistica e il “fare”
urbanistica (Gabellini, 2010), nella complessità della
dimensione contemporanea. La condivisione di idee
fra i diversi attori che agiscono sulla scena urbana è
infatti lo strumento chiave dell’azione progettuale, so-
stenuta e amplificata dal social-networking: architetti,
ingegneri e progettisti sono chiamati a confrontarsi
con le dinamiche prodotte dalle nuove tendenze,
seguendo un approccio riflessivo e precauzionale,
flessibile e dinamico, aperto, partecipativo e multi-
competente, integrandosi come parte attiva all’inter-
no di un processo che persegue come fine ultimo la
qualità del vivere urbano.
Ascoli Piceno, nel 2011 a Torino. Per maggiori informazioni:
http://parkingday.org/
LUISA BRAVO
Dipartimento di Architettura, Università di Bologna,
luisa.bravo@unibo.it
City Space Architecture, Associazione culturale,
www.cityspacearchitecture.org
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R., Tronchin V., Città e luoghi. Materiali per la “Città
rimossa”, Gangemi, Roma
Ring, K. (2013), Self Made city. Berlin: self-initiated ur-
ban living and architectural interventions, Jovis, Berlin
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DOSSIER urbanisticaonline
INUEdizioni
Marzo 2014
Editore: INU Edizioni
Iscr. Tribunale di Roma
n. 3563/1995;
Iscr. Cciaa di Roma
n. 814190
Codirettori:
LAURA POGLIANI E ANNA PALAZZO
Coordinamento segreteria
generale:
MONICA BELLI
inued@inuedizioni.it
Consiglio di amministrazione
di INU Edizioni:
M. FANTIN (presidente)
D. DI LUDOVICO (consiglieredelegato)
F. CALACE, G. FERINA
Redazione, amministrazione e
pubblicità:
INU Edizioni srl
via Ravenna 9b - 00161 Roma
tel. 06/68134341, 06/68195562
fax 06/68214773,
http://www.inuedizioni.com
Comitato scientifico e consiglio
direttivo nazionale:
CHIARA AGNOLETTI, ENRICO
AMANTE, CARLO ALBERTO BARB-
IERI, DOMENICO CECCHINI
CLAUDIO CENTANNI, ENRICO
CORTI, GIUEPPE DE LUCA, GIORGIO
DRI, ROBERTO GERUNDO,
MAURO GIUDICE. LUCA IMBERTI,
LA GRECA PAOLO, ROBERTO LO
GIUDICE, FRANCO MARINI, DANIEL
MODIGLIANI, FEDERICO OLIVA
MARIO PICCININI, PIERLUIGI
PROPERZI, RAFFAELLA RADOCCIA,
FRANCESCO ROSSI, LORENZO
ROTA, ANDREA RUMOR, VINCENZO
RUSSO, NICOLO’ SAVARESE,
SILVIA CAPURRO, STEFANO
STANGHELLINI, MICHELE STRA-
MANDINOLI, MICHELE TALIA,
CARMELO TORRE, CLAUDIA TRILLO,
GIUSEPPE TROMBINI, GIOVANNA
ULRICI, SANDRA VECCHIETTI,
PIERGIORGIO VITILLO, SILVIA
VIVIANI, COMUNE DI LIVORNO
(BRUNO PICCHI), PROVINCIA
DI ANCONA (ROBERTO RENZI),
REGIONE UMBRIA
Progetto grafico:
ILARIA GIATTI

Urbanity. Public life and social quality, by Luisa Bravo

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