Ripensare la città contemporanea in funzione degli spazi di qualità Reconsidering the present-day city according to the quality of spaces

The issue of the public spaces and of their crucial importance within the social, political and the cultural life of a city which belongs to the citizens will continue to interest the scientific and cultural debate with more significance. The good governance of the territory, and even better the urban welfare in favour of the present-day city, is also being tested by the "limits" set by the urban planning standards which, at the time of their establishment, represented one of the highest points in Italian urban history allowing to apply the program in a generalized way and guaranteeing the availability of spaces reserved for collective and social needs to every citizen. The necessity to guarantee a better and different urban quality forces us to go beyond the quantitative aspects of the standards and to experiment a renewed approach that responds to the requirement and the equalization features of the new social demand. Responding to new needs means reconsidering the mandatory minimums and to expand them structurally towards the cultural spaces, redistributing them in order to guarantee the necessary urban regeneration. While dealing with this, the need to reconsider the role of the urban plan and/or in any case to redefine its form according to the morphological/identity aspects and the environmental sustainability emerges. We are aware that territorial and urban planning is experiencing a particular season at every governmental and territorial level. This is principally due to the changes that have affected the values underlying the choices of the plans and the projects and at the same time to the challenges that threaten our cities, with the consequent production of a collective demand that is directed essentially towards the quality of life.