Reopening Teatro Valle in Rome. Urban practice development tools and languages: ‘public space’ as the interaction between different dimensions

Over the last two years, ‘cultural squatting’ has become an arising urban practice in several Italian cities. This paper focuses on the case of Teatro Valle’s reopening in Rome and calls for a careful rethinking of the theoretical framework of Commons relating to this informal practice. Considering ‘urban space as Common’ is becoming the necessary background to reformulate spaces as ‘public’: result of interaction between different dimensions. Following Carlo Donolo, ‘Commons’ have to be understood as a new useful paradigm to spread new organizing structures and to engage the citizenship in their reproduction. The present essay aims to illustrate this urban practice by illuminating the inherent variety of tools and artistic languages that grassroots mobilize and by valuing cultural differences and different points of view of the involved ‘actors’.