Places, pandemic and multiple risks: new emerging urban challenges

The Covid-19 emergency, although in different manner and measure, is changing habits and use of places and cities at global level. In many cities, public spaces became completely empty for months and new urban landscapes have substituted the previous ones, transforming the private in public. Children and young have interrupted the school in presence to start that by internet; adults started the smart working; elderly begun to meet their sons through the computer. Houses and balconies were used for work and study, allowing people to go inside the private life of everyone. The reopening of public spaces has happened after months of closing, allowing again “live” social interactions, although in respect of the physical distance, confirming the importance for all people of these places. In this scenario the current problems of any places could create further challenges: areas characterized by industrial dismission, cultural heritage in a poor state of conservation, and public spaces with low level of accessibility, maintenance or inclusion, if interested by pandemic emergencies – or other kinds of both sanitary and environmental crisis -, require more integrated and flexible interventions. To analyse these places and provide a suitable sustainable regeneration meant in its three-fold meaning and adaptation, different new methodological approaches were created. Starting from these premises, this study, carried in the framework of a Prin 2020 - Research Projects of National Relevance - with the author responsibility, is aimed at illustrating: the main questions deriving from the pandemic emergency with respect to the public spaces and relative challenges; the main current methods of analysis and design of these spaces; an emblematic case study, characterized by flexibility and accessibility at different level. Conclusion concerning both critical and positive issues of the case study will complete the paper.