Spazi residuali. Prove di significazione nella città di Torino

The paper takes into account good practices of community planning realized in Turin and in particular it describes an ethnographically-oriented participant-observation study conducted while I worked as consultant within the “Residual Areas Project”, a program managed by the Urban Design Office of the Municipality, meant to intervene in neglected public space located in trouble urban district, intended as an area of co-design between art, architecture, urban planning and social sciences and aimed to (re)design those spaces implementing a bottom-up logic and setting-up a “sense of belonging” through actions based on active collaboration between citizens, users, mediators and planners. Data collected included audio-recorded interviews with participants, participant observations, and photographic recordings. Through a qualitative analysis of these data the paper aspires to fulfill three main purposes. First, it considers the factors that have led city authorities to place an increasing emphasis on culture policies. Second, it examines arguments that have been advanced about the effectiveness of cultural projects as tools of urban (re)development. Third, it presents the above mentioned project for the requalification of public space trying to show all different levels of citizen‟s involvement in planning and design and finally questioning its impact on creating more livable and inclusive cities.