L'Achitecture de survie /1978) in back talking to EU cities in crisis. The provocative message by Yona Friedman as a key for the present and future urban agenda

Thinking of an essential architecture or a city with less dependence on energy, cars, and concrete seemed utopian when Yona Friedman published Architecture of Survival. Today they are urgent and necessary challenges. His book continues to be a resource in the overview of town planning literature, although it is much less considered than it should. Architecture of Survival is a very current prism to review our way of thinking and designing the city. Living with less and generating more benefits is the bet we face. For Yona, welcoming poverty in the urban and architectural projects is an indispensable condition for everyone (the ordinary man). It is a tool to give space to simplicity, which would help us live better, have a deeper relationship with the environment around us, re-inhabit urban spaces, appreciate the little things, and understand and respect nature. No architecture can afford to trample man and the planet by impoverishing both. These pillars of ‘good living’ always need new narrative projects to keep them alive and current in the urban project. Yona Friedman tried it, and his utopia is not only current, but today it is still a precious and dense material to train the young architects and urban planners of tomorrow.