Commerce and public space: questioning roles, meanings, risks, and potentialities

The paper proposes a reflection on the nature of public space in urban centers, starting from its relationship with commercial activities. Commerce has always functioned as an attracting pole. It has been capable of orienting flows and routes, providing visual “protection". It has also been able to connote significantly the public space facing it, if not, in some cases, occupying it, through forms of privatization. The relationship between commerce and public space, particularly neighborhood commerce and public space of proximity can be a formidable key to ensuring quality and urban vitality. Market dynamics and the supra-local rules and laws are decisive in orienting the commercial offer. Nonetheless, a reciprocal and positive relationship between public space and commerce can occur, provided several aspects are considered. Among others: the take-over and care actions done by economic actors that do not result in exclusionary operations but, on the contrary, in fruitful cooperation with local actors (from sponsorships for management to forms of direct involvement); the need for stringent dialogue between various urban actors and trade associations (to consolidate a culture capable of recognizing the territorial and not just the economic role); the need to consolidate a culture of public space, acknowledging its role as central to urban quality in its most entire forms of 'publicness'. Starting from the analysis of several cases in Milan and other Italian cities in which economic actors played a role in the transformation of 'innovative public spaces', the paper critically discusses the potentialities and criticalities of the relationship between commercial activities and public space, returning some elements that emerged from the dialogue between different subjects.