Condizioni dell'abitare e politiche urbane in alcune esperienze europee : nuove sfide per il progetto delle città

The city is the context in which the coexistence of different populations has formed historically, leading to problems of adaptation and integration. In recent decades, it has become the pleace where these problems have produced strong tensions and been exacerbated by the economic changes and social relations induced by the neoliberal revolution, globalization and migratory phenomena. This article, with reference to the European city, focuces on issues arising from the aggravation of inequalities and the accentuation of the dynamics of social polarization in the processes of producing space, and examines them as one of the spatial implications of public housing policies. In the cases considered, the projects developed in the second half of the twentieth century have contributed to the fragmentation of the city into many separate and disconnetìcted parts, through the application of a simplified functional formula. The main challenge that contemporary city poses to urban planning and to public policies, concerns the social, as well as environmental, sustainability of transformation. i.e. the mitigation of the growing asymmetry of the opportunities offered by the city as a living environment to its increasingly heterogeneous populations, as well as the recontruction of its connective capacity. In this direction, Sennet's contribution concerning the open city is considered very fertile, and the paper indicates the main suggestions that can derive from it for contemporary urban planning.