From smart land to green society. Urban regeneration as driver for the human reactivation of communities and for the socio-economic rebirth of the suburbs

Abstract

Our country, currently crossed, from North to South, by a demographic and anthropological hurricane fueled both by the aging population and by the depopulation of many fragile and marginal territories and by new waves of youth emigration, continues to record worrying increases in land consumption (Ispra-Snpa, 2018). As various surveys document, real estate assets that could be retrained or refunited, even temporarily, are hundreds of thousands. In cities increasingly lacking in public spaces and torn apart by the scourge of inequality, the urban regeneration of this precious heritage could trigger socially desirable change through inclusive and innovative bottom-up processes. Regulatory rigidity, more and more often, is overcome by the operational dynamism of citizens who, from passive spectators of political representation, declining the principle of ethics of co-responsibility, aim to become active operators in the democratic reconstruction of their neighborhoods. The two case studies presented, which have in common the youthful protagonism and the desire for redemption of “middle cities” historically neglected and culturally degraded, reveal how urban regeneration, innervated by social innovation and when acting according to strategic and integrated visions, it can produce widespread environmental, cultural and economic benefits.