Abstract:

How can we participate in building the city of the future - sustainable, circular - starting from the design of its interiors and spaces? The aim of the text is to investigate the role, practices and tools that design plays in activating regeneration processes of abandoned sites through the engagement of local communities and youth participation.

The debate on the contemporary urban condition focuses on the so-called metabolism of the city (Wolman, 1965). Starting from the famous United Nations program, some Italian agencies monitor and evaluate urban data: the report "Urban Agenda for Sustainable Development" (ASVIS and Urb@nit, 2019) aims at a National Strategy for the urban regeneration; the recent Domus ISPI index "Urban energy - five dimensions to grasp the future of cities" measures in particular the energy resulting from the various forces involved (economic, kinetic, social, attractiveness and environmental) and observes, among the 10 world cities analyzed, greater differences on attractive and social energy: economic inequalities and social tensions slow the growth of less developed cities.

The design of the environments and places acts in this context and promotes recirculating spaces, reinventing their use in a circular economy perspective, and returning them to collective social relations (Camocini, 2016, Pimlott, 2016). The last ISPRA Report “Land consumption, territorial dynamics and ecosystem services", for example, says that the consumption of Italian soil continues to increase incessantly. Many theories and practices of "urban regeneration" and "reuse" have been developed, also throught new forms of re-appropriation, open and collaborative and incremental practices and methods (Manzini, 2015, Sanders, E., 2008). The design of the spaces has become the promoter of peculiar approaches, where the engagement of the stakeholders, intended as promoters of their own interest, becomes an engagement of community-holders, or endorses of shared contributions towards common goals.
It is a paradigmatic change of perspective: the design of renovated spaces constitutes, as well as the space itself returned to the community and to its value of use, a generative platform both of connections and skills for all the subjects that benefit from the place and feel it as their own. From net-working to "mesh-working", one could say, that is from the network to the continuous and continuously shapable surface of a mesh. Meshes have the ability to let visualized and experimented shared ideas on the future destiny of places, considering designer not only as a mediator but as a "place" able to collect needs and return value as in a symbiont system.

Beyond the theoretical reflections, case studies are illustrated and a research-action on the design of a disused space within a large scholastic comprehensive in the periphery of the metropolitan city of Milan. The design process involves the active engagement of several significant actors (students, teachers and managers of the schools, youth associations, sports associations, local companies) in a responsible and competent design process of a space hub for community cohesion. In a multidisciplinary research team design faces the challenge of transmissitting skills aimed at transforming potentially interesting visions into well-founded projects capable of lasting over time.

Keywords:

Youth participation, community cohesion, urban regeneration, spatial design.