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Accepted Paper:
Engaged residents as informal urban planners. A bottom-up re-appropriation project in the neighborhood of an Italian city
Donatella Schmidt
(Università di Padova)
Daphne Reguiesse
(University of Padova)
This paper intends to present visually bottom-up practices of everyday urban living, focusing on an urban project which aims at the creation of a ‘green corridor’ interconnecting places that represent an integral part of the daily life of residents and students in an Italian neighborhood
Paper Abstract:
Italian neighborhoods are often heavily crossed, densely inhabited and with a significant multicultural setting. Although an increasing attention for bike paths, light mobility and green spaces is periodically declared by city administrators during the electoral period and in the times of the PNRR, reality travels in a parallel dimension made of concrete infrastructure and mobility on wheels. For this reason any alternative project intending to subtract a green area to cement and decay should be object of consideration and analysis. This paper focuses on a bottom-up urban project aiming at the creation of a ‘green corridor’, obtained from neglected and residual spaces, in order to interconnect schools, sports centers, church patronages, and stores that represent an integral part of the daily life of residents and students. We like to retrace the steps of this project through time introducing the actors involved, the methodology used, and the difficulties overcome. Re-appropriation, collective action, endurance, imagination are just some of the concept-words that will be appropriately used to describe it. Purpose of our visual presentation is also to reflect on an experience of active citizenship from two different disciplinary angles, represented by anthropology and urban planning. Ethnographic methods, focusing on specific contexts and providing a multifaceted account, are a prerequisite for any project design dealing with people and places (van Willigen et al. 2019). On the other hand, urban planning with an integrated approach is a must in regeneration processes of ecological transition in our contemporary cities and neighborhoods (Bekemans and Mazzocchin 2017)