Mobilità, densità, urbanità. Nuove forme di interazione urbana a Shanghai

With the phenomenon of metropolization and in relation to the development of digital and high-speed technologies, the inhabitants’ mobility has reached intensities and forms never seen before. In this new dimension, the infrastructural nodes, unable to combine spatio-temporal disruption and unchanged values of beauty, well-being and sharing, often represent the mere result of technological innovations in contrast to the real needs of inhabitants. At the same time, these latter constitute places where it becomes possible to hypothesize a new city: increasingly hypertechnological and hyper-connected and, at the same time, capable of slowing down and generating interstitial spaces still capable of encouraging interaction and relationality. Within this framework, Shanghai stations constitute spatial emergencies decontextualized from their urban surroundings, as self-referential elements disconnected from a surrounding fabric with which they relate by contrast. Traversing the connecting space between the station and the surrounding neighborhoods, there is a perceived sense of “missed relationship” that calls for a rethinking of this fragmented and undervalued spatial relationship. However, it is possible to glimpse a new effort in the guidelines that have guided municipal urban planning in recent years, geared toward overcoming the old approach of urban fragmentation and functional zoning.