Collective Spaces for Intercultural Dialogue: Immigrants and the Right to Beauty

The paper reports the results of a larger research project on collective urban spaces as harmonization drivers for intercultural dialogue. The assumption behind the proposal is that, in the third millennium, the construction, rehabilitation or recovery of outdoor urban spaces should take into account the promotion of a new sense of identity among individuals and groups (Gifford R.,1987). Deep changes in urban frameworks, challenge contemporary cities, where often, common spaces formerly central, risk an indissoluble physical degradation, due to processes of social marginalization. Architectural and urban design, through the promotion of beauty, can convey new messages of dialogue and coexistence between communities (Butina G., Bentley I., 2007). The paper, focusing on small leftover urban outdoor spaces in Italian cities, introduces a critical thinking about the links between their performances, in terms of image, practicability, accessibility, security and attitudes towards inclusivity. Urban and architectural solutions are privileged means in order to reaffirm the concept of common space as dwelling, residence of the community, with the creation of new social ties and the growth of local shared identities. There was a time in which intellectuals, architects and philosophers foreshadowed a city model where people were the centre of the building and living. Technologies supported the sizing of urban spaces on a human scale, with areas devoted to socializing, with walkable sites and reasonable distances, privileged places for exchanges and meetings. In a world that slowly loses the original connotations, the city is asked once again, today, to reaffirm the reasons of a forgotten identity, putting man at the centre of the polis, supporting the diversity of civil society with dialogue and coexistence. The essay concentrates on the processes of acculturation occurred in Italian cities: in urban contexts these were always accompanied by an increase in the potential for beauty. A choral sedimentation marked the acculturation of architecture, where beauty becomes externalization of shared values: its definition is the result of physical, material elements, and intangible factors, evocative and suggestive, like the ability to put in place mechanisms of identity, respect and consideration. Claiming the cities‟ right to beauty, through the commitment in planning for the recovery of ancient sites, implies a shift of attention from the design theme of safeguarding the physical system, the contrast of material degradation, to the centrality of users' in redesigning places, recognizing a priority to shared values archetype for development. According to urban planners, the city today has to be connected (rather than being a juxtaposition of segregated spaces) and transitive, viable and accessible in all its directions (and not just, for example, from the periphery to the center). The intercultural city should encourage the sharing of its sedimented beauty, to help preventing from danger and setting all inhabitants free. Beauty is the only way to rediscover the value of urban hospitality: to live does not mean either reside or stay, not occupy or preside, but to trace people' biography into the landscape (Illich I.). Affirming the right to beauty for intercultural urban spaces means marking the characteristic feature of living in having care, and saving sedimented identities.