La polis del futuro

There is nowadays an urgent need to know produced futures of our making, that is to engage or re-engage with what is called future presents (Adam 2007), which has to do with social responsibility. Progress relates to future, but not all kinds of progress make future. Sometimes future is not linked to what we call progress, much more so to what we call responsibility. This is also because responsibility and knowledge are less and less linked, while non-knowledge is becoming the dominant feature of technology-based innovation. So while innovation increases, thanks to scientific and technological advancements, the parallel growth of uncertainty and indeterminacy gave rise to an increased need of social and individual responsibility in making future. Innovation became indeed a matter of ethical concern and a basis for political present and future action Building sustainable cities is of the utmost importance for the future, no less than to deal with the theme of regeneration, retraining and sustainable urban reuse. The theme in fact implies the issue, crucial in town planning practice, of acting in conformity with a policy mode of a sustainable city development. Projecting sustainable cities, that still have their matrix in the Greek polis, also involves the consideration of various related aspects, among which that of spaces excluded from production processes, that of shantytowns, those of urban expansion, of environmental impacts and, last but not least, that of consumption of non-urbanized soil. Another issue of consequence for urban regeneration is the construction of appropriate decision-making inclusive processes. The citizens’ participation, as it appears in Musco’s book (2009) certainly looks as an important element on two grounds: on the one hand to identify, support and develop policies of sustainability, on the other as means to achieve shared solutions. It must be said, however, that in order to be effective and efficient, participation should be a continuous, recurrent practice. Retrieving spaces abandoned from production processes or restoring new environmental, economic and social quality to degraded districts perfectly answers the concept of sustainable city, by limiting urban dispersion and reducing environmental impacts inherent in the built-up areas (Musco 2009). An excellent example in this line is provided by the city of Barcelona. Central in current projects of requalification of the city is the intention of connecting it with the retrieval of Ensanche (or Eixample in Catalan) from Cerda’s idea, already stretched to include all the social and urban needs of a city one and a half century old. Public space and its regeneration are then conceived as a strategy for modification of the metropolitan area, once again overcoming the fences of utopia with the ability to carry out projects (Mazzoleni 2009). The awareness of living in a world whose resources and possibilities of expansion are limited helped to draw attention to the ecological limitations and the possibilities of change in relation with both environment and culture. Hence the diffusion of methods of ecology of culture and of ideas to find sustainable solutions. The very peripheries, those of which Renzo Piano the architect writes that they need to be ‘mended’ by a new generation of able and responsible young people, are perhaps to embody the city of the future, and not only in Italy: ‘The suburbs are the great urban bet of the coming decades. See the example of Otranto (1979). New crafts and techniques are to be found, intended to the consolidation of buildings, and micro businesses that only need a small capital to trigger a virtuous cycle’ (Piano 2014). The irreparable decline and inexorable depopulation in some of the U.S.A., Japan and western and eastern European cities and suburbs, at the same time stimulated the research for a better understanding of new synergies between decline and growth. The phenomenon of urban contraction has acquired a new meaning, which connotes a variety of urban ailments, comprising both North and South of the world. The planning lessons that come from both the American Rust Belt and from Eastern German cities are conquering the center of the scene and helping to solicit new planning paradigms.