The role of the design disciplines in times of pandemic. Relationship between legislative planning and urban form

2020 was the year in which the world community discovered itself vulnerable, it was the year in which all of us became aware that the lifestyle and development perpetrated up to now could no longer be considered sustainable. However, there were some moments in which we thought that the words “lockdown”, “social distancing”, “pandemic”, were only passing. In this sense, 2021 was the year of awareness, the moment in which we became conscious that our way of inhabiting the earth was radically and structurally changing. Somehow, we have experienced the concept of “resilience” on ourselves, we have adapted it to every aspect of our life. The persistence of the health emergency is exacerbating the structural deficiencies of the contemporary city with negative impacts on urban communities, widening the gap between rich and poor. Having acknowledged that the pandemic has affected everyone without distinction, regardless of economic conditions, the lockdown has highlighted how the discriminating factor between those who have more possibilities and those who have less was the “space”, both private and public. So, the field of investigation on which the contribution focuses is the public space of the cities, underlining the role it played during the lockdown, highlighting how it changed its function, up to the role it will have in the near future and consequently the role of the design disciplines in the resilient changing of the contemporary city. It is now clear that such systemic complexity cannot find any answer in sectoral approaches. In fact, the political decision-maker and the designer are understanding with increasing awareness the need for an interdisciplinary, inter-scalar, iterative and integrated approach to urban complexity which presupposes as a preliminary act an overall systemization and subsequent implementation, within the design disciplines, of the EU directives and national matters on public health. Thus, the quality of life is closely connected with the quality of the urban environment, which is why urban regeneration strategies are assuming an ever-greater social value.