Cities and migration: generative urban policies through contextual vulnerability

Abstract This paper deals with the relationships between urban policies for the integration of migrants and the construction of new spaces of coexistence in the contemporary city. It discusses the limits of the current conceptual framework of integration and shows how it works in a way that seperates space and people from each other. This creates marginalisation and segregation in already unjust and uneven cities. By contrast, the paper proposes a different perspective toward the construction of coexistence between local populations and migrants. It places a particular emphasis on contextual vulnerability and on its role in generative planning experiments that are aimed at creating inclusive cities. It also reflects on some of these experiences by considering their potential to reconnect local people, migrants and places, and shows how a focus on a relational and embodied understanding of vulnerability can give rise to supportive, less disciplining forms of coexistence in the contemporary city

Processi di periurbanizzazione nei paesaggi dell'olivo

The urban sprawl in the agrarian territories of Sassari started more than twenty years ago, even if the urban development is disciplined by urban planning. In the essay we read the evolution of land use and land government, according to the plans at different scales; furthermore, a diachronic analysis of land use transformations is done, to underline the trends toward a sort of urban “dispersion” or “diffusion” (Indovina 1990), both residential and commercial. Such urban phenomenon is articulated in different areas, characterized by different ways of interaction between residential (or commercial) and (residual and marginal) agrarian land uses. This forms of interaction oscillate between two conditions: one is a sort of “olive trees and residential landscape”, a unicum of interaction between the trees matrix and the settlement. This landscape – in which the relationship with the environmental structure of the territory (the valleys system, Monte Bianchinu, Monte Oro) is privileged– is opposed to the settlements superimposed to the historical agricultural matrix (Li Punti, Predda Niedda), which dim it and determine non-structured hybrid edges. Between these situations, intermediate forms of interaction can be recognized; these need planning rules ad hoc, that choose the most suitable “devices” to govern the urban phenomena and to maintain the original landscape matrix

Graphic-Novel “Diario dal confine. Ventimiglia/Diary from the border. Ventimiglia”

Questo fumetto è tratto dall’esperienza di ricerca dell’autrice nel campo delle politiche migratorie dell’Unione europea. Il breve racconto si focalizza, in particolar modo, sul diario di ricerca scritto durante l’etnografia svolta al confine italo-francese di Ventimiglia tra settembre e dicembre 2018. Il lavoro desidera documentare alcuni esiti dei controlli francesi alla frontiera – nuovamente in atto dal 2015 – e delle politiche italiane volte a gestire il conseguente aumento dei migranti in transito in città. Il lavoro si focalizza su questi ultimi e sull’impatto negativo che un certo modo di intendere e gestire il confine ha sulle loro vite

Derelict places as “alternative” territories of the city

In her paper “Derelict places as alternative territories of the city” Silvia Serreli discusses some alternative territories of the city not directly linkable with the dense metropolis. The experiences illustrated by means of the concepts of peripherality and proximity offer interesting departure points for in-depth study of the urban perspectives for non core-areas in particular. The crisis processes involving derelict sites are not connected with their being “small” realities, but with being “isolated” places, far from the “sources of knowledge creation and transfer”. Situations in peripheral areas are also investigated, by means of the concept of re-urbanity, in which new ways of inhabiting are found which shape new spatialities. These are places where the great tension between the different urban populations, be it the long-standing residents or the neo-rural in-migrant populations, has revealed new socio-spatial dynamics which highlight significant emerging practices of the city. The approach towards new scenarios of territoriality is highlighted by the author through certain requisites of the project: the environment is the strategic nucleus of space organisation perspectives and growth of economies; the environmental structure guides and directs localisation and organisation of settlement systems and activities; local societies need urban motivation and environmental awareness. In particular, attention is drawn to how urban motivation may be produced in the project through the use of narratives which give voice to territorial subjectivity and put the social actors in a position to express their values and expectations. The narrative approach offers itself as one of the modalities of selfrepresentation of a local society, as it constitutes the exploration of representations of trajectories that favour recognition of the plural dimensions of a territory

City project and public space

The book aims at nurturing theoretic reflection on the city and the territory and working out and applying methods and techniques for improving our physical and social landscapes. The main issue is developed around the projectual dimension, with the objective of visualising both the city and the territory from a particular viewpoint, which singles out the territorial dimension as the city’s space of communication and negotiation. Issues that characterise the dynamics of city development will be faced, such as the new, fresh relations between urban societies and physical space, the right to the city, urban equity, the project for the physical city as a means to reveal civitas, signs of new social cohesiveness, the sense of contemporary public space and the sustainability of urban development. Authors have been invited to explore topics that feature a pluralism of disciplinary contributions studying formal and informal practices on the project for the city and seeking conceptual and operative categories capable of understanding and facing the problems inherent in the profound transformations of contemporary urban landscapes