Performing Cities from Peripheries. Inclusive Design Experiences and Anthropological Practices to Rethink Public Spaces in Milan

The essay critically analyses the emergence of a “performative city”, in a dialogue between design and anthropology, by focusing on different typologies of projects that establish the urban environment and transform it, from time to time, into a “set” for large events, a “theatre” for activating local actions or a “backdrop” for bottom-up re-appropriation. Through the development of a “peripheral vision” from marginal areas, marked by hybrid identities that are constantly being reshaped, it becomes possible to think of semi-peripheries as a laboratory in which a different urban future can be experienced. The experiences analysed here are widespread virtuous practices in contemporary cities, designed to involve neighbourhoods and enhance territorial assets to create symbolic and economic value. These processes, imperfect, rhetorical, and “enchanting” at times, are not free of criticism but contribute to achieving inclusive participation and rethinking the uncertainty of the present as an opportunity. Moreover, these actions’ “superficiality” and ephemerality are meant to strengthen the social capacity of imagining and aspiring. Since the ability to imagine is a precondition for initiating any process of constructing the new, it is precisely the discipline of design that can act as a driver to define cities as more sustainable, open to otherness and scenographic: thanks to its inclination toward using narrative languages and inclusive tools, the eccentric is valued as a trigger for innovation and the creation of imaginative scenarios.