Sharing Public Spaces: Urban Planning and Policy in Cities of Differences

By exploring cases of inclusive and exclusionary policies and practices in some northern Italian cities, this chapter intends to delve into the crucial challenge for contemporary cities of negotiating differences in urban public spaces, and how urban decision-makers and practitioners can positively or negatively determine the inclusion potential of the cities they govern and plan. The issues and cases referred to in the chapter derive from the knowledge and experience accumulated by the think-tank of the SSIIM UNESCO Chair on the “Social and Spatial Inclusion of Inter-national Migrants—Urban policies and practices” (SSIIM UNESCO Chair (www. unescochair-iuav.it) was established in 2008 at University Iuav of Venice, Italy.), which is based on a large number of action-research projects, studies, conferences, dialogues, and reflections conducted over the past 15 years. This contribution is not intended to be exhaustive of the many issues it raises, but to provide food for thought on the crucial role that urban planning and design have (and should have) in framing diversity and accommodating difference in contemporary cities.