Peripheries and Social Fractures: New Paradigms of Regeneration

The Italian peripheries are in a critical situation: the enormous growth of economic and financial powers, the eclipse of major political movements, the urban transformations, have led to the end of the relationships and social balances that the periphery had constructed with the whole 'system-city'.

As this equilibrium breaks down, the possibility of integration, involvement and political voice of those living in urban suburbs tends to be nullified; institutions become more and more distant, distrust and disenchantment with them grows; public participation wanes; and the techno-economic system seems to have no longer any 'antagonist' who can effectively counter its entropic effects.

Is therefore still possible to do anything about it? The idea is that the point from which to start, at least to attempt to make an adequate reflection, is precisely the rupture of this equilibrium, a rupture that under certain conditions can become the flywheel of a renewed social, economic and even urban development of the various 'suburban conditions.'

What is needed, however, is to support a real paradigm shift, capable of looking at geographic, social and economic ruptures in a renewed way, enabling new visions about the periphery and the movements of renewal and development that can start from it. The idea is that there is a hidden vitality, animating some of the city's most marginal places, expressing attempts at resistance. We speak in this sense of smart suburbs, do-it-yourself cities, cities that rise, to indicate that transformative capacity, of reappropriation and redesign of spaces that arise from a variety of subjects and forms, which are giving rise to forces that seem to be able to affect social life.

A case study related to a suburb of the city of Naples will be discussed in the talk.