L’Housing Sociale strumento di rigenerazione urbana nei quartieri ERP

The paper deals with the suggestion of recent Social Housing as an effective tool for urban regeneration, especially when applied to the renewing of old Social Housing neighborhoods and their peculiar situations, in particular those settlements built after World War II. The presence of different physical and socio-economic diseases, together with the potential resource of wide underused open spaces, makes these contexts, both in Italy and in Europe, suitable for experimental and innovative transformations from different points of view - urban, architectural, procedural, social. The design of new Social Housing interventions could be a real asset, being able to promote a “virtuous densification” - physical, relational and meaningful - on existent spaces resulting not so “dense” or “intensive”. It is important to consider the social aspects of the matter, too, through socio-economic practices promotion, service auto-production and solidarity, actually intrinsic in the new concept of Social Housing. The paper shows some results of applied researches on the subject, related to Academia (IUAV University of Venice and Roma Tre University), researches dealing with several Italian case studies, some of which applied and experimental (LUS, PASS), and some related to the analysis of the most recent interventions of Social Housing in Italy