Generating commons makes cities alive

Climate change, together with the pandemic and geopolitical crises(which requires us to reflect on the issue of food and energy autonomy) has broughtback the focus on the cities on their ability to generate and regenerate public goods(for example, healthcare, school, and mobility) and commons in new forms. Citiesare at the same time thefirst culprits and thefirst victims of climate change. They arethe places where we can face past failures and errors, recognize resource-dissipativebuildings and behaviors; or we can produce a deep discontinuity with the past,transforming them into workshops for real change. Due to their high concentration ofassets, skills, technologies, and institutions, big cities can provide the resources forthe most innovative solutions to these phenomena. Through their excesses, humanvariety, inequalities and contradictions, multiple languages, mixing and conflictingcultures, and natural biodiversity, cities willfind a way for the survival of the planet.Cities are indeed the greatest and most complex human product—a commons thathouses commons. They are frail goods, continuously undermined by the risk ofconsumption and abandon, tied to the civic culture of a community, to its capacity ofregenerating itself from waste, abandoned places, and crises; however, they are alsothe place of rebirth, of social, cultural, and economic biodiversity, where every crisiscan be turned into a chance for change.