Quality and safety in public spaces: a new challenge in the post Covid-19 period

Public spaces represent places where people spent their free time. This is true in particular if the public space is agreeable, welcoming, easy to access and with many activities to do. In Italy it does not exist a specific law for urban design project; for this reason, the creation of a public space is devoted to different kind of urban planning tools. In the same way, also funds that can be devoted to their creation are different according with the used urban planning tool and can be public or public and private; furthermore, the design can be realized by the administration office technician or by a private expert. But in any case, to comprehend the receipt for the success of a public space is not easy and many factors can concur to it. This year a new condition has characterized Italian and worldwide public space. The 2020 Covid-19 pandemic has interested the whole word and, although in different manner and measure, changing habits and use of people of places and cities (Carmona, Heath, Oc, Tiesdell, 2010; Gehl, 2010, 2016, 2020; Mehaffy, Elmlund, Farrell, 2019). In many countries public spaces became completely empty for months and new urban landscapes have substituted the previous one, transforming the private in public (Friedmann, 2010; Francis, Giles-Corti, Wood, Knuiman, 2012; Zelinka, Brennan, 2001). Houses and balconies were – and still are – used as the work and study scene, allowing people to go inside the private life (Carmona, 2019; Madanipour, Knierbein, Degros, 2014). Children and young have interrupted until the new academic year the education in presence to start the distance one; adults started the smart working; elderly begun to meet their son on the video of the computer (Karsten, 2003; Zhai, Li, Liu, 2018). In Italy and in the other countries, the reopening of public spaces happened, although with different restrictions. Starting from these premises aim of this paper is to present the results of a research carried in the framework of: the Urban Maestro. New Governance Strategies for Urban Design Horizon 2020 research project, the ISMed-CNR post-Covid researches and the INU Community Public Space, the latter coordinated by the author. The author, as a member of the Advisory and Support Group, shared the Italian good practices in the public space field. The Community Public Space has the objective to collect best practices of public space in Italy, starting from the Charter of Public Space which was adopted during the second Biennial of Public Space held in Rome in 2013. The Charter is composed by 50 principles that are a sort of guidelines for liveable and sustainable public spaces. In order to comprehend the relationship between theory and practice and verify the validity of the Charter after 10 years of its creation and in particular in this sanitary emergency, about 30 case studies were collected (UN Habitat, 2013; Garau, Lancerin, Sepe, 2015). The ISMed-CNR research titled Analysis and design of contemporary territory: identity, health and liveability for resilient and sustainable places with the author’s responsibility is aimed at identifying the factors and elements which make healthy and liveable a place – in the aforementioned 30 Italian case studies, and more in general in the world, - through ad hoc methodologies of urban analysis and design.