The Future of the City in the Name of Proximity: A New Perspective for the Urban Regeneration of Council Housing Suburbs in Italy after the Pandemic

Abstract

The concept of ‘urban proximity’, which has returned to the limelight with the promotion of the ‘15-min city’ developed and re-proposed for the post-COVID city, cannot simply be associated with the concept of physical proximity to the essential activities of daily life but must concern reinforcement of the social interactions that some places are able to activate better than others. This article focuses on the regeneration of Italian council housing neighbourhoods that lack relational proximity, even when functional proximity has been painstakingly achieved. It describes the fundamental steps of a working method that aims to strengthen the ‘relational performance’ of public spaces, using an interdisciplinary cognitive and assessment process and co-planning with the local community based on the issues of inclusiveness, safety, and climate vulnerability. The experimentation made in an economic and social housing district in a city in Central Italy revealed the need to ‘hook’ the space node onto the node of local capacities and resources, recognizing the local community as the bearer of desires, capacities, and planning will, capable of orienting and prefiguring the complex process of regeneration in the post-COVID city.