Living together: not necessarily in cities

The 2020 European Agenda has identified cities as the main testing grounds for the achievement of environmental, economic and social sustainability goals, recognizing cities as the main catalysts of innovation and creativity and as the most vulnerable to social, economic and environmental critical issues. This however does not exclude the fact that such issues or criticalities are also present in suburban areas and small- and medium-sized cities within rural– urban territories, which are progressively marginalized compared to big cities that continue to attract and pull people out of the city outskirts through the phenomena of daily commuting, thus converting these fringe areas into an unproductive suburbia suffering social and economic disadvantages. Working on these issues will also help solve the critical aspects of cities. Living together must become possible also in the suburbs by working on and highlighting local and specific values; that is buildings that need to be renovated, updating and creating new services, restoring old historical heritage towns, highlighting cultural, artistic and environmental sites. Implementing network services, promoting local environmental assessments and energy efficiency, enhancing broadband which also means establishing Districts and identifying which territorial module to adopt in the current changing phase where Municipalities are merging, Provinces are being abolished while metropolitan areas are launched in their place and the number of Regions is being reduced, borders are being redefined; all of which is changing the territorial configuration and imposing efforts on the governance in order to establish which best model and level of commitment/participation to adopt. The objective of this survey, here just briefly introduced in terms of progress, is to actually “test on the field” a methodology, beginning from a single urban unit part of the grid, i.e - the urban cell - (see references), fully equipped at all different levels through an integrated approach, that can address the critical issues regarding areas that are less densely urbanized and be readapted to Districts so as to relaunch the territory’s economy ensuring social integration. We are dealing with new and more difficult challenges including comparing plans at different scales which even considering the present state of economic crisis will find in a few regional projects, like the Lazio Region’s New Energy Plan and Economy of the sea’ initiatives the proper grounds to operate.