Connected Proximity. ‘Social Streets’ Between Social Life and New Forms of Activism

The chapter, by Fabio Introini and Cristina Pasqualini, is focused on Social Streets. From 2013 onwards, in the main cities of Italy, the emerging phenomenon of Social Streets (from now on SoSts) has been gathering momentum. This process is trying to reconfigure urban forms of sociality with many implications at the level of collective action, participation and metropolitan transition. A SoSt can be defined as the attempt to use Facebook to reconnect and give new life to those social relations of proximity resting on a defined and delimited portion of urban space (the streets) which the SoSts, in turn, contribute to modifying and producing, with their online and offline action. Firstly aimed at rebuilding social ties, confidence and social capital, SoSts play a pivotal role at the pre-political level, reshaping in a participatory way the forms of dwelling. Being dwelling a meta-practice, this means that SoSts are also becoming collectors, catalysts and enhancers of innovative social practices inspired by a new philosophy of sustainability and a culture of sharing, which have political meanings and consequences. Even if, in contemporary society, pre-political action is in and of itself political, the rise of SoSts is pushing its trajectory toward the intersection with institutional politics and the processes of city governance, with relevant consequences concerning SoSts identity and activism. In this paper, drawing on the evidence of quali-quantitative research on the city of Milan (which, with its 62 SoSts, is the Italian city in which this phenomenon has currently reached its largest expansion) attention is focused put on the way in which SoSts, acting in the wider and heterogeneous network of urban players (institutions, civil society, media) can affect the collective life of the polis.