Marginali, dimenticati, dismessi

How many disused, informal, underutilized or simply invisible spaces, are entangled in the urban structure of our cities? How many of these forgotten spaces can we find close to historic centers and large meeting-places, not far from big arterial roads? What brings ad area out of the city life’s map? While we walk in our cities, we often chance upon interruptions, small empty lots or emptied, forgotten and decommissioned, for so long time to be, in some cases accepted, as historical context. These spaces are not necessarily degraded places, but areas which belong to the city in an informal and wrong way, or simply the city doesn’t pay attention to them. Our perception of this fact decreases, because unfortunately we can get used even to abandonment and physical degradation of parts of the city, if they do not belong to us or are not recognized as parts of a living organism, or simply do not fit in our affective urban consolidated imagery. Many of these areas are public property and, as often happens in the widespread public perception, being everyone’s property, in the end it turns out to be like a nobody’s property. Not so different fate happens to some private spaces, forgotten by the urban development or real estate for various reasons, because of their location, physical or legal dissolution of the property or simply because technical and urban conditions don’t make actions on their refurbishment or enhancement affordable.