Abitare le tre età

The article develops a theoretical and design-oriented reflection on the concept of living in public, understood as condition, process and use, to investigate public space as social infrastructure. Drawing on Heidegger and Arendt, it proposes overcoming the dichotomy between private and public, recognizing their complementarity in the construction of urban humanism. Public space is described as a living palimpsest of shared relationships and practices, in constant transformation, where each generation contributes in specific ways to redefining forms of belonging and collective identity through different uses, needs and imaginaries. Through reflection on select representative projects, the article shows how urban space becomes truly inhabited thanks to daily interaction and shared practices. In this perspective, designing means imagining dynamic and inclusive places, where relationships between people define the very form of contemporary living.