I believe that Covid-19 has created a new space
for talking about our cities, forcing us to reflect on our lives and re-evaluate our priorities. “Should I
move to a greener neighborhood? Should I start saving up some money for the
future? Maybe I can re-decorate my terrace. Oh, I miss sitting on a bench and
watch people
go by.” These might be some
of the thoughts that have crossed your mind lately.
During these peculiar times, we are looking for security and comfort and our homes have become more than ever a symbol for safety. Many are staying home voluntarily as a way of protection and the governments in most countries introduced measures requiring people to leave the house only for limited purposes. The message ‘stay at home’ is being spread by the voice of the majority– or, better said, by the voice of the most visible part of society. As the digital space has become our way to connect with others, many of us have found a form of solidarity in sharing the same reaction to the current situation and encouraging others to take part in this collective action: #stayathome, #restiamoacasa, #quedateencasa, #stamacasa and so on, these hashtags have flooded the social media channels. But how is this applying to the ones that do not have a place to call home, to the ones that do not feel safe at home? What happens to the less visible members of society, to the most vulnerable? Does solidarity extend only to those that have a voice?
The above questions made me reflect on how
communities are capable of positive transformations and how they exercise this
right. As David Harvey said, “there are occasions when the ideal of human
rights takes a collective turn”[1].
This time, people are trying to reclaim their access to basic health and
personal security in the city. The strategy that most of us have adopted
during this period is that of changing our daily practices and behaviour by avoiding social contact in
the hope of reducing the transmission of the disease, which will allow us to
regain our freedom of
movement, our access to public space and our right to the city. Especially in
these circumstances, the process of re-creating the urban space, even
temporarily, depends on all members of society, also on the ones that cannot #stayathome. This
means that we should renegotiate the space of the city, create solutions
for everyone and not discriminate against the most vulnerable, that “must be not only protected but also engaged”[2].
Urban vulnerability
If the current crisis has reminded us that we all
are vulnerable, then I believe it is the right moment to ponder collective
vulnerability and responsibility in creating safer cities. Urban living is put to the test during this period
and there has been a great variety of responses to the insecurity and risks
that the world is experiencing. While some
reactions are driven only by fear, there are also some resilient communities that learned to reinvent
themselves, and that became models of urban laboratories.
Perugia, a small city in the heart of Italy, is one good example of exercising
collective power during the crisis.
Community resilience?
Perugia has been my home for 10 months, but since I left the city I stayed up to date with the news and recently came across a social media post about something called paniere solidale (solidarity basket). The solidarity and engagement that I observed here reminded me of Bauman’s belief that city life is based on the hope of finding ways to easily and successfuly cohabitate and interact “with an enormous, perhaps infinite variety of strangers”[3]. Perugia decided to create a support network for these “strangers” and for all inhabitants of the city through the simple practice of lowering a food basket from the balcony, so that anyone can take something if they are in need or help others by leaving packages.
Perugia, Via Enrico dal Pozzo. Source: Facebook page Associazione Culturale Fiorivano le Viole
PThis practice originates from Naples: it is thought that the phrase from the above image was used one hundred years ago by an Italian doctor, Giuseppe Moscati, in order to help the most vulnerable citizens get access to food and to promote the creation of support networks throughout the city[4]. His habit was later adopted in other cities across the country. Solidarity initiatives have a long tradition in Naples and generally in Italy, among which we can mention caffè sospeso, spesa sospesa, farmaco sospeso, etc. (more here).
This collective action of sharing goods represents a mechanism of cultivating solidarity and can be further interpreted as a gift to other members of society – and as Mary Douglas points out, a gift “supplies each individual with personal incentives for collaborating in the pattern of exchanges”[5]. I believe that such networks of exchange constitute the base of a community and, as the current situation has revealed, this type of community interventions, like paniere solidale, are increasing in number during a crisis. But does the local community have the capacity to respond to vulnerability and, in the most extreme cases, homelessness? Is it correct to leave this response in the hands of the community alone? Whose responsibility should it be?
Collective responsibility
The italian example represents a small-scale
intervention at community level and it advocates
for active citizenship and
empowerment. It is not the definitive solution to homelessness
and vulnerability, but I believe this example can be used as a representation of the urgent
need of social security for the “invisible” members of the society, the need of
healthy environments and the need of building a culture of collaboration.
Community-based actions in a time of crisis represent an opportunity to review
urban living conditions and to reevaluate the concept of having a right to
the city. I believe the local community to be a key actor in the process of
claiming this right for all its members and a key actor in the process of
alleviating homelessness. But this issue cannot be completely solved
without a stronger government response, the production of urban space is a
process of sharing responsibilities and multilevel collaboration. For
example, during this crisis, public authorities should respond quickly and address
the immediate needs of the citizens: e.g., England’s Ministry of Housing,
Communities & Local Government[6]
is working with the local authorities to urgently accommodate rough sleepers in
hotel rooms (more here).
The street “is the river of life of the city”[7], as William H. Whyte remarks.
Going back to where it all started, the street –
home to a large part of the world population (it is
difficult to measure, but OECD is estimating that homelessness concerns more
than 1.9 million people around the globe[8]) – it is time
to reconsider its role in the process of exercising the right to the city. Streets represent spaces of exchange and connection
and they should be planned as safe, hospitable, inclusive environments that
invite people to interact.
This issue should become a collective concern in the future and I believe a first step in this process should be to re-explore the meaning of the right to the city. What can we add to Lefebvre’s definition: “right to freedom, to individualization in socialization, to habitat and to inhabit”[9]?
[1] David Harvey, Rebel
cities: from the right to the city to the urban revolution (London: Verso,
2012), p. 3.
[2]International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, The Great East Japan Earthquake. Learning from Megadisasters (Washington
DC: The World Bank, 2012), p. 4.
[3] Zygmunt Bauman, Liquid
Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p.
92.
[4] Riccardo Siano,
<< Napoli Ecco il cestino solidale “Chi ha bisogno
prenda”>>. La Repubblica, March, 2020.
[5] Mary Douglas,
“Foreword”, in The gift, Marcel Mauss (London: Routledge, 1990), p.
xviii.
[6] Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, Luke Hall MP, Correspondence: Coronavirus (COVID-19): letter from Minister Hall to local authorities on plans to protect rough sleepers. Gov.uk, March, 2020, accessible here.
[7] William H. Whyte, City: Rediscovering the Center (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), p. 7.
[8] OECD, Better data and policies to fight homelessness in the OECD. Policy Brief on Affordable Housing (Paris: OECD, 2020), available here. The current situation is pushing urban planners to redesign public space in order to meet the new needs of citizens and it is also an occasion to urge authorities and civil society to guarantee protection to those whose home is the street and to make these people visible in the city.
[9] Henri Lefebvre, Writings on Cities (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1996), p. 173.Perugia, Via Enrico dal Pozzo. Source: Facebook page Associazione Culturale Fiorivano le Viole.
Housing is one of the most serious urban issues: the Housing Europe 2015 Report described a dramatic situation marked by the lack of adequate housing, the increasing of social and housing polarization, phenomena of housing deprivation and the reduction of affordability. In Italy, the last Federcasa-Nomisma report too has let emerge a difficult situation: the housing discomfort in 2014 involved 1.7 million households, touching both the Public Residential Building (ERP), and the non-ERP rentals. The social housing, even if able to offer leases lower than the market, cannot keep up with the growing demand; the Real Estate Funds System did not create enough accommodation to meet the housing demand. In addition, the last ISTAT report (2018) revealed the highest peak of absolute poverty since 2005, foreshadowing a possible increase of the housing emergency.
An important gathering to reflect about the Italian housing situation has been held in Matera (Basilicata) during the General Assembly of Federcasa[1], last June 27th -28th. A two-day conference introduced by a seminar event “House as a common. Public housing as a social infrastructure for urban regeneration and development”, organized by Federcasa in collaboration with LabGov – LUISS Guido Carli University and the ATER of Potenza and Matera. The event, with an international approach, was opened by the Federcasa President, Luca Talluri and moderated by the General Director, Antonio Cavaleri. It saw the presence of institutional actors and academic experts discuss the potentiality and critical issues of the new management and financing models for the public real estate. Among them also Professor Christian Iaione, which coordinated a recent research developed in collaboration with Federcasa to understand how to make the use of the existing housing stock more efficient and to investigate new models able to increase the availability of housing units and guarantee new ways of access.
The research “House as a Common: from collaborative to community housing”, presented during the conference and to be published in the next months, focuses on the analysis of new forms of living, currently under testing both in Italy and abroad, able to promote or facilitate initiatives of urban regeneration through processes of social, cognitive and technological innovation and to generate new forms of urban governance. In particular the national and European contexts, both in terms of legal systems and practices, analyzed in the report, have highlighted the relevance of new housing models in which the cooperation, sharing and collaboration are predominant. The report started from the Elinor Ostrom’s design principles, glimpsing in the cooperative and collaborative management model of living and in self-organized communities of residents an alternative way potentially able to give a new and effective answer to the housing problem. The Ostrom’s approach has been developed by Sheila Foster and Christian Iaione to adapt it to the urban context and the research used the five design principles identified by the two scholars through the field work of the “City as a Commons” approach to analyze the housing sector. Applying the Co-City approach to the housing sector means reading the current problematics through a different lens paving the way for the hypothesis that new housing models based on cooperation and collective forms of management can represent a concrete answer to the current housing shortage.
The research in particular analyzed and codified 73 Italian case studies, using the five design principles (urban co-governance, enabling state, economic and social pooling, experimentalism and tech justice) as empirical dimensions operationalized with qualitative indicators, taking inspiration from the Ostrom’s institutional analysis and from the Co-City database analysis, together with a hypothesis-generating and refining case studies methodology (Yin, 2014; Swanborn, 2010; Stake, 1995). In addition, an in-depth analysis through semi-structures interviews was made on 9 cases considered significant, extracted among those better able to show the main features and the dynamics to monitor under the Co-City protocol, and the main patterns emerged from the case selection.
In particular, in terms of co-governance, translating this Co-City reasoning at the housing level, allowed to retrace a three stages model: the simple building sharing (first degree of the co-governance gradient, sharing), collaboration or co-production of services operated by the actors involved in the housing project (second degree: collaboration) and co-management and co-ownership of the buildings by the actors involved (third degree: plycentrism). From the analysis emerged a tendency towards the polycentrism even if there are not completed forms of it. In Italy, in view of interesting experiences, they still situated at the first and second degree but allow to understand some crucial aspects: first of all how the implementation of complex levels of co-governance in the housing sector required to develop new multi-actors social partnerships forms (i.e. public-civic, public-private-civic, etc.) and an ecosystemic approach to realize the transition towards new forms of affordable housing. The role of the public actors (enabling state) appears as a key element that favors the success of the housing projects and the presence of economic and social pooling processes through collaboration enables positive externalities of public utility for the local community. In addition, the civic element seems to be a better guarantee in the creation of truly collaborative projects and the presence of the private actor can influence the development of the project especially in economic terms.
Nevertheless, there are some critical aspects underlined by the research: 1. A geographical imbalance in the distribution of the innovative experiences (the main innovative projects are located in the North and Central Italy, while the South still strive to find solutions in terms of housing affordability, the involvement of the public actor is still very marginal and the offer proposed by the active actors on the housing sector remains mainly private in nature); 2. Beneficiaries are mainly part of the so-called grey segment of population (people that cannot access to the traditional real estate market and not even to the public housing) and not the weakest; 3. Urban regeneration does not necessarily go through the re-circulation of disused public or private buildings; 4. With the Integrate Fund System often the public actors provide the land or the real estate but at the end the public resource benefits mainly the private actors and the fund becomes in this process a kind of privatization of the ERP system, hence the system should be rethought in order to avoid the risk to reproduce the same market fails of the public-private partnerships.
What emerges from the research is that the public support becomes more effective when combined with the private sector and the civic component in order to favor the shared use of the commons, maintain a high level of experimentalism, encourage the use of technological innovations and the spirit of collaboration. What is still missing is a widespread administrative favorable context, that is the enabler infrastructure required to spread these emerging models (Aernouts and Ryckewaert, 2017). Therefore implementing models that enhance the universalistic role of the public housing agencies considering the activation of multi-stakeholders partnership inside new co-governance models, could help to face the more dramatic situations and cover more segments of population looking for a housing solution (Aernouts and Ryckewaert, 2018).
From the analysis, the research identified the Community Land Trust[2] as the tool better able to reach the level of polycentrism, since it is a model of property cooperativism able to realize stable partnerships among the public institutions and the so-called “public as community” – inhabitants, civil society organizations, cognitive institutions). The CLT is a community-centered model that tends to connect the diverse autonomous centers of a city, foreseeing a property scheme; while the sharing and collaborative experiences observed in Italy are mainly based on the use and management of the housing property without opening to the wide community. The research suggests that in Italy this solution could be introduced experimenting the potentialities of legal forms such as the community cooperatives, the participatory foundations, and other forms of social partnership and administrative tools already existing in the Italian legal background. What is required is a contextual-based method applied through a preliminary experimental process inspired by the principle of the administrative self-organization of the local authorities and by the civic autonomy considering the specific variables of the urban social context and the institutional capacity. In this sense adopt an Advisory Board could be helpful to support the local governments and the agencies of public housings.
Besides the research “House as a commons: from collaborative to community housing” the conference saw the speeches also of other experts: Laura Fregolent from the IUAV University presented a research on Venice estimating the crisis impact on the housing sector and suggesting to rethink the city starting from a wide-ranging knowledge of the local contexts. Alice Pittini, research coordinator of Housing Europe, explained how the principles of self-management, empowerment and co-creation can be integrated in the housing theme. Joaquin the Santos from the CLT Brussels presented the Community Land Trust operating in Brussels. Nestor Davidson, professor of law at the Fordham University, via skype call, explained how the American public housing works, going throw historical and political steps, stressing the concept of neighborhood effect, highlighting how the crisis is generating new housing models, talking about the Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program, presenting some best practices such as the Common Property Funds or the New Yorker’s legislation to provide low-income citizens with access to counsel for wrongful evictions. In particular Nestor Davidson emphasized how the uncertainty of federal funding, as well as the political polarization, have led to social innovations and new models demonstrating that public and private can work together simply finding new tools to do it at best. Edoardo Reviglio from Cassa Depositi e Prestiti remembered the success of the old GESCAL founds and the importance to rethink the Piano Casa in order to consider the weakest segment of population.
Professor Iaione proposed some closing food for thought for the future:
Knowledge: it’s important to note that a new social pact is already being re-established between those who manage the housing projects and those who live there and today there are already new solutions in the housing sector, hence we should start from the critical issues to understand how overcome them;
Pluralism: the public actor is not alone, it can count on the communities and on a plurality of emerging solutions, actors and tools, from which the public houses should be reconceived as social infrastructures;
Neighborhood effect: the housing agencies can be urban, but also social end economic, regeneration agents acting as engine of local development;
Institutional capability: testing before and evaluating after, should be the guiding concepts before any concrete action or change in the normative frames.
The conference was closed by the President of Federcasa which also stressed the importance to start from what already exist in the Italian context to experiment new solutions, looking to processes of regeneration that are urban as well as social and economic.
[1] Federcasa is an association bringing together 114 public housing companies and housing bodies at the provincial, communal and regional level. Members of Federcasa provide over 850.000 social dwellings to low and middle income households, partly financed by public funding.
Il mondo delle case popolari si è incontrato a Matera il 27/28 Giugno 2018 in occasione dell’Assemblea Generale di Federcasa. Un appuntamento arricchito dal convegno “Casa Bene Comune. Le case popolari come infrastrutture sociali per la rigenerazione e lo sviluppo urbano”, organizzato da Federcasa in collaborazione con l’Università LUISS Guido Carli e le ATER di Matera e Potenza. Diversi esperti, tra cui anche il prof. Nestor Davidson in collegamento skype dalla Fordham University di New York, sono intervenuti per discutere delle potenzialità e delle criticità delle nuove formule di gestione e finanziamento dell’edilizia residenziale pubblica. In particolare è stata presentata la ricerca “Casa Bene Comune: dall’housing collaborativo all’housing di comunità”, coordinata dal prof. Christian Iaione che ha investigato nuovi modelli di abitare capaci di aumentare la disponibilità abitativa e garantire nuove formule di accesso.
The focus will be on urban policy, urban governance and collaborative planning. The meeting will bring together academics, policymakers and practitioners to better understand the ideas of participatory approach to urban development and discuss new concepts such as urban commons, cooperative cities and sharing cities. The meeting will be also an opportunity to integrate academics and discuss future research projects in the field of urban and regional studies. There are 7 conference themes to which researchers interested in exchanging ideas and results on urban studies are invited to participate:
Urban policy – theory and practice
Collaborative planning in cities
Urban and metropolitan governance
Urban Commons and city as a commons
Sharing economy, circular economy, and urban development
Urban regeneration strategies, tools, and projects
Urban laboratories and experimental economics in urban studies
The call for paper has been until August 30 to collect abstract on these themes. All reviewed and accepted papers will be published on “STUDIA REGIONALIA”, “JOURNAL OF ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT” and other peer-reviewed publications.
Professor Christian Iaione, LabGov Faculty Director, will take part in the conference as a keynote speaker.
Un’altra importante occasione per discutere di #urbancommons e #sharingcities: il 12 e 13 ottobre 2017 a Katowice (Polonia), presso la University of Economics, il Dipartimento di Economia Spaziale e Ambientale organizza la 4th International Conference on Urban and Regional Economics. La conferenza, dal titolo “Contemporary Urban Policy – European Perspective”, si concentrerà sui temi delle #urbanpolitics, #urbangovernance e #collaborativeplanning. Fino al 30 agosto è possibile inviare il proprio abstract su uno dei 7 temi proposti. Maggiori informazioni al sito www.ue.katowice.pl/ure.
In his book “Cities for People” the Danish Architect Jan Gehl tells us that if we want to build lively, sustainable, safe and healthy cities, we need to pay more attention to the human dimension, which in the last decades has been highly neglected. According to Gehl, urban planners need to observe the city at eye level, adopting the point of view of a pedestrian rather than thinking about the city only in abstract terms, as “the battle for quality is on a small scale”. Gehl’s view is deeply influenced by the seminal work of the American activist and journalist Jane Jacobs, the first strong voice who denounced the dominant urban planning ideology for having lost contact with real cities and with the needs of their communities.
Today, more and more cities are realizing the importance of going back to the human dimension as a starting point for dealing with the interconnected issues resulting from intense urbanization.
This appears particularly true when we turn to consider the question of traffic. Since the car’s advent, a great amount of time and energies have been devoted to the transformation of the urban environment required to accommodate the ever-growing traffic. This has often meant sacrificing common spaces in order to allow for car’s circulation and parking, which resulted in what could be defined as the “Tragedy of the urban roads” [1], that we discussed in this article.
The dramatic consequences of such approaches have become evident, and contemporary cities are focusing on finding ways to reduce traffic, re-appropriating public spaces and making their streets and neighborhoods more livable and sustainable. Different traffic-reducing measures have been experimented and implemented in the past years, ranging from investments in sustainable and accessible public transportation and bike sharing to measures aiming at discouraging cars’ usage, including car bans, no-cars zones, increases in parking prices combined with reduction of parking spots, and much more.
The city of Barcellona, picture under CC license (available here:https://goo.gl/images/aYqPKZ)
One innovative solution which is worth observing comes from the city of Barcelona, where the newly elected administration is not limiting itself to the introduction of traffic-reducing measures, but is instead completely rethinking the entire city structure, bringing it back to the human scale. Such transformation will take place through the creation of Superilles, macro-neighborhoods designed by adopting the point of view of the pedestrian, with the aim of making the city more livable and sustainable for its citizens. The programSuperilles “Let’s fill streets with life” envisages the creation of nine macro-areas, within which car-circulation will be reduced at its minimum, favoring the development of sustainable mobility, green areas and new spaces for collective living. Car circulation will be limited to the perimeter roads of the neighborhoods and parking spots on the street-side will be greatly reduced, resulting in the re-appropriation of collective space. The project is ambitious in its objectives: the city aims at reducing its car use by 21% over the next 2 years, while at the same time increasing the amount of mobility by foot, bicycle and public transport. To facilitate this transformation in people’s habits, the creation of superilles will be complemented by the introduction of a stronger orthogonal bus network, limited to the main streets, and by the creation of 300 kilometers of cycling lines.
This innovative approach to traffic and urban development is only one of the novelties introduced by the new administration, which since its election in 2015 has been attempting to “win back the city”. The administration, guided by the ex-housing activist Ada Colau, who was elected on behalf of the citizens’ movement Barcelona en Comù, is strongly committed to the defense of the common good and to the improvement of people’s quality of life. Furthermore, it believes in the importance of bringing about a transformation by challenging the economic and political dominant paradigms from below, by involving as many people as possible in transparent and participatory decision-making processes. In this way, as explained in the How to win back the city en Comù guide, the city can go back to being the place of encounter, of innovation and of exchange of ideas that it should be, and can become the place where a true democracy is reconstructed.
As stated by Ada Colau, “We’re living in extraordinary times that demand brave and creative solutions. If we’re able to imagine a different city, we’ll have the power to transform it”. This is exactly what is being done in the Barcelona where, through the creation of the superilles, the human dimension is brought back to the center and we are reminded of the importance of creating “cities for people”.
[1] Christian Iaione, The Tragedy of Urban Roads: Saving Cities from Choking, Calling on Citizens to Combat Climate Change, 37 Fordham Urb. L.J. 889 (2009).
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Una soluzione innovativa al problema del traffico (recentemente discusso in questo articolo), arriva dalla città di Barcellona, in cui la nuova amministrazione si propone di ripensare l’intera struttura a partire dal punto di vista dei pedoni, riconoscendo l’importanza di quella che l’architetto danese Jan Ghel descrive come la “dimensione umana”. Questo avverrà attraverso la creazione di Superilles, macro-aree al cui interno la circolazione dei veicoli sarà impedita, favorendo invece lo sviluppo di aree verdi e spazi comuni. Complementare alla riduzione del traffico sarà un forte investimento nello sviluppo di trasporti pubblici e piste ciclabili, volto a stimolare lo sviluppo di forme di mobilità sostenibili.
“…che la cultura, più che mai oggi, sia uno strumento irrinunciabile per scrivere il nostro futuro”[1].
It is becoming increasingly apparent that culture is an ever-present dimension in different debates, beyond the traditional artistic-cultural one: culture as a right, culture as wellbeing and welfare, culture as a commons, culture as a factor of social and economic development, culture as education, culture as a driving force for urban regeneration, culture as a resource for sustainable development, culture as citizenship.
Besides the emergence of a participatory and collaborative approach in conceiving and managing cultural projects, events and institutions, there is an ever-raising awareness of the intersectoral implications of culture as a process, also in terms of spillover effects. This is particularly enhanced and demonstrated by European and international policies, documents and initiatives as well as by the celebration of 2018 as the European Year of Cultural Heritage: documents such as “Council Conclusions on cultural heritage as a strategic resource for a sustainable Europe” (May 2014, available here), emphasizing the role and relevance of cultural heritage for a “smart, sustainable and inclusive growth”, “Commission Communication towards an integrated approach to cultural heritage for Europe” (July 2014, available here) and its related documents, or the final results of “Cultural Heritage counts for Europe” project (2013-2015), which deeply recommends the adoption of an holistic approach to cultural heritage.
As for the participatory issue, it is promoted by the EU with the “Council conclusions on the participatory governance of cultural heritage” (2014, available here) and the interesting “Mapping of practices in the EU Member States on Participatory governance of cultural heritage” (2015, to be found here), realized by the EENC-European Expert Network on Culture within the OMC Working group on cultural heritage.
Also UNESCO approved a specific project “Approaches to participatory governance of cultural institutions”, carried out by Kultura Nova Foundation in Croatia and supported by UNESCO’s Cultural Diversity Fund (June 2016-June 2018). Moreover, in its paper “Engaging local communities in Stewardship of World Heritage” (World Heritage, paper nr 40, November 2014, available here) it calls for community engagement at all stages of the World Heritage process, by learning experience from the Community Management of Protected Areas Conservation (COMPACT) methodology.
This collaborative and comprehensive trend is also emerging in many cooperatives, associations and organizations’ practices, both for international and local projects. For instance, the outstanding project and participatory process of Matera 2019 European Capital of Culture, or the experience of Hotel du Nord in Marseille, an inhabitants’ cooperative providing a network of accomodations and hosts and touring opportunities through heritage walks, or that of La Paranza in Naples, a cooperative of young people from the disadvantaged neighbourhood Rione Sanità managing the Paleochristian Catacombs.
The Commons Post, aware of the fundamental role played by culture, is committed to investigate this topic by proposing different cases and best practices, both international and local, throughout the year. The European and international policies and initiatives and the potential, the role, the effects of culture-driven processes led by different communities in different contexts will come under the spotlight.
Our purpose is to stress the leading role of culture in many changes under way. It’s time to overcome a short-sighted approach to culture and to acknowledge its long term sustainable contribution to the formulation of effective policies, processes and projects.
Because culture sounds future!
[1] Dal Pozzolo L., Garbarini A., Oltre la sindrome del Vilcoyote. Politiche culturali per disegnare il futuro. Luca Dal Pozzolo, Aldo Garbarini in conversazione con Francesco De Biase, FrancoAngeli, 2016, p.9
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La cultura come filo rosso che attraversa numerosi dibattiti e processi di sviluppo. La sua centralità in questa fase di cambiamento e l’esigenza di un approccio sempre più trasversale e di lungo termine non viene soltanto sottolineata da numerosi documenti europei, ma emerge anche dalle pratiche messe in atto da associazioni, cooperative e organizzazioni di varia natura a vari livelli. Per questo motivo, la cultura sarà tra le tematiche su cui andremo a concentrare la nostra attenzione nel 2017.
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