La densità è morta. Viva la densità!

The “fil rouge” developed so far about the new dimensions of density in urban planning and management, certainly does not presume to close the circle on such a complex issue. Maybe it is useful in providing some answers but at the same time it is raising new questions. Research groups, professionals, politicians and other actors deeply involved in urban regeneration process seem to be aware that diagnostic profiles and urban scenarios cannot be correctly defined through the traditional "static density" only: it is still very useful, but it is not enough. Methods and tools for investigating and evaluating the mosaic of urban phenomena – and density is a key issue among them – should be renewed according to the invading “new temporalities” of contemporary lifestyles we can find in civic communities. The new challenge, still in progress, is connected with the conception of the city in dynamic terms: complex networks, nodes and poles overwhelming the “absolute, static space”; hence a different configuration of flows, organized in non-hierarchic, "rhizomatic" networks. The tools for the cities government, despite new assessment methods and sophisticated modelling, do not seem ready to internalize the emerging demands of the "liquid city". The rationale of dynamic density is not limited to the “make-up” of assessment methods or to the introduction of more sophisticated indicators. We should foster a different approach, "able to see" the urban metamorphosis; the culture of urban observation could be enriched taking into account an increasingly kaleidoscopic and fragmented social reality. As a matter of fact, the disintegration of the consolidated model of modern society, "the end of sociality” and the raising of extreme individualism - brilliantly described by Alain Touraine - are producing cogent effects on the new paradigms for living and transforming contemporary urban reality. The dissolution of the intimate link between spatial and temporal dimension, that Zygmunt Bauman identifies as the distinctive issue of modernity, is forcing us to shift the focus of on time as the central value for shaping and managing space. The "liquid city" with its multi-temporality is called to renew the static domain of physical space through the kinetic, dematerialized flows, plunging the city users into an accelerated, compressed space-time with a deeply immersive experience. The poetic evocations by Italo Calvino in his “Invisible Cities” is probably the best way to underline the complexity and uncertainty of the future urban condition. Sophronia is a liquid city “par excellence”, living dramatically its splitting. The first half is kinetic, playful, brilliant with soft relationships diffused in a changing geometry, whereas the second half is heavy, structured, visible, according to the principles of the traditional urban structure. A city with two distinct identities, conflicting and integrating at the same time. Yet the apparent steady part of the city reveals the most ephemeral, affirming the priority of the “other side”, the city of space-time flows, authentic lifeblood of urban reality. It represents a dense network of synapses which, however, cannot assume any recognizable form without the “stone city”. It is a wonderful metaphor of the "liquid modernity", a new cultural and social context in which the dynamic density can play an important role for facing the future challenges of the city.