Rome seen from the ground and from the sky, also compared to the ideal city. The social representations from the perspective of long-term residents and of airport workers

Historic cities face a number of critical issues such as impacts of poor open spaces and built quality. In this volume it is discussed on how these complex problems should be tackled properly to make better places through an open space strategy approach. With a selection of contributions that contain forward-looking ideas and strategies for evaluation of heritage open spaces, relationships are highlighted between cultural value of spaces and spatial dynamics. Part two describes how historic open spaces traditionally devoted to social and economic activities can be also transformed with new uses, place-identity and vigour. Historic open spaces should be re-created whilst keeping their cultural value. They can help to open the way for social integration, spatial quality and urban safeguarding.

This chapter is part of a broader research program initiated by de Rosa in the 1980s on “Place-identity and Social Representations of European Capitals in First Visitors of Six Different Nationalities” . It has been developed over time in various lines of investigation interrelated between them: “field studies” and “media studies” , taking inspiration from the peculiar multi-theoretical and multi-methododological perspective, characterizing the “modelling approach” as a paradigmatic option specific to the research field guided by the Social Representation theory.