The city of care. Strategies to design healthier places

The major challenges facing the planet, such as extreme poverty, climate change, environmental degradation and health crises, have pushed the UN member countries to include cities among the key players of the Sustainable Development Goals to find common solutions. COVID-19 pandemic impact has increased the vulnerability perception, not only of the weakest sectors of the population such as slum dwellers, persons with disabilities, elders, migrants and refugees, women and children, but also a general vulnerability of cities and megacities, which proved particularly inadequate to prevent contagion diffusion and to provide healthy psychophysical conditions. At the same time, looking to the pandemic in a better perspective, COVID-19 seems to re-balance the design role, returning to consider it as one of the most effective tools to solve the real problems of a society, beyond an approach often too much connected to stylistic and aesthetic elements. The lesson learned is the need for global cooperation and solidarity for a transition to a healthier and more sustainable world, which should take into account the concept of health as a fundamental human right. The book explores care as a transition strategy to be addressed to bodies, minds, cities and nature. Endorsing the care system as a female knowledge based on complexity, flexibility, management of the unexpected, sense of responsibility, the project culture can extract this paradigm from the domestic perimeter, bring it outside and make it accessible to all in work, politics, relationships, places and communities.