This book explores new forms and modalities of relations between people
and space that increasingly affect the life of the city. The
investigation takes as its starting point the idea that in contemporary
societies the loss of our relationship with place is a symptom of a
breakdown in the relationship between ethics and aesthetics. This in
turn has caused a crisis not only in taste, but also in our sense of
beauty, our aesthetic instinct, and our moral values. It has also led to
the loss of our engagement with the landscape, which is essential for
cities to function.
The authors argue that new, fertile forms of interaction between people
and space are now happening in what they call the 'intermediate space',
at the border of "urban normality" and those parts of a city where
citizens experiment with unconventional social practices. This new
interaction engenders a collective conscience, giving a new and
productive vigor to the actions of individuals and also their relations
with their environment.
These new relations emerge only after we abandon what is called the
"therapeutic illusion of space", which still exists today, and which
binds in a deterministic manner the quality of civitas, the associative
life of people in the city, to the quality of urban space. Projects for
the city should, instead, have as their keystone the notion of social
action as a return to a critical perspective, to a courageous acceptance
of social responsibility, at the same time as seeking the generative
structures of urban life in which civitas and urbs again acknowledge
each other.
