Co-living, temporary uses and new identities of public spaces in the contemporary cities

The increasingly widespread presence in large urban areas of migratory phenomena and the consequences of the economic crisis have progressively modified the urban living system, which today has to deal with the themes of temporary settlement, whether by choice or necessity, and the sharing of spaces and services (co-living). This new urban dimension, in addition to its development potentials, is also therefore characterized by a rise in increasingly explosive inequalities: social areas excluded from the job market and consumption of goods, privatization of public space, inequalities in the collective mobility system, the new poverties of unintegrated immigrants, the problem of social housing units and their segregation, safety, and many others. The paper intends to offer a reflection on the spontaneous dynamics of reappropriation of public spaces by the ‘migrant’ communities that prefigure a future of the city, and therefore of society, which is not only multicultural, but above all intercultural, thus capable of activating processes of identity and cultural integration in the places most used for social life. The urban planning discipline cannot remain deaf to the demands coming from these experiences, and must make a critical evaluation of its role, starting from a consideration of the planning of new public spaces in the contemporary city to meet the various different spatial demands. The design culture is called upon to tackle the matter of non-permanent, migratory settlement dynamics, a challenge of integration among culturally different interpretative models and forms of spatial appropriation. The public life of the city follows the pace of the life of its citizens and communities, in their temporary settlement; the nature and functions of the ‘collective’ places should be able to follow this short cycle and could be conceived as short-term systems, which may be reconfigured as time goes by to meet the changing needs of the users.