Creative Revitalization of the Urban Space: the Residual Areas Project in Turin

This papers addresses the connections between cities’ revitalization, public space and issues such as social inclusion, urban governance and citizens’ participation in the decision making process within the Italian context. More generally it aims to answer the following questions: how do people transform spaces into places? What’s their role in designing urban public spaces? How do they creatively intervene in the design of urban spaces? Public space, as clearly expressed by Lefebvre, is the primary site of public culture. But it is also, as Zukin points out, a privileged window to city’s soul and creativity. In such a context the paper takes into account good practices of community planning realized in Turin and in particular it presents the outcomes of an ethnographically-oriented participant-observation study conducted while I worked as consultant within the Residual Areas Project, a program managed by the Urban Design Office of the Municipality, meant to intervene in neglected public space located in trouble urban district. The “Residual Areas Project” is intended as an area of co-design between art, architecture, urban planning and social sciences and aimed to (re)design and (re)vitalize those spaces implementing a bottom-up logic and setting-up a sense of belonging through actions based on active collaboration between citizens, users, mediators and planners. In such a context the paper aims to present the above mentioned project trying to show all different levels of citizen’s involvement in planning and design and finally questioning its impact on creating more liveable and inclusive cities. Moreover it also attempts to clarify the conceptual framework within which a similar planning method should be analysed.