Città latenti. Tre scenari di trasformazione per la città abusiva nell’Italia contemporanea/Latent Cities. Three Evolutionary Scenarios for the Abusive City in Contemporary Italy

After several decades of tacit and uncontrolled self-organization policy – that is, a policy, typical of the southern part of the country, finalized to the production of a domestic landscape which radically differ from the optimistic forecasts of the ruling urban planning and architectural culture of the time – and after 20 years of surprisingly regular resort to “building remission” policy, we intend abusive territories as latent cities: their social capital as well as their environmental qualities have been eroded without compensation by these distort construction habits until today they have become latent and unrecognizable. Different dynamics cross the latent city today. On one side we are in presence of the dismantling, the abandon, the evolutionary and never-ending houses that become permanently unfinished and degraded. On the other side we face the emergence of new embryonic collective actions and unheard forms of economic advantage that point out, in a way that never occurred in the past, that new transformations are indeed possible. We assume that the unregulated city, today, is a fact of life, and that all the “elements of possibilità” by which it is possible to transform it are already located – latently – in the folds of its present condition. In this sense we intend the project as an enzyme, which can grow and partially reform the everyday practices from the inside. Three scenarios are then developed. These scenarios are conceived as three reflections on the ways to operate on the latent city and exploit its main emerging trends. The first scenario depicts the abusive city as absorbed by the existing city. Unplanned settlements upgrade their collective equipment through the action of small owner initiatives and regenerate their commons – social, as well as physical. The settlements thus reach a level of self-consciousness which turns them – and above all in people’s imaginary – into the “city”. In the second proposal, the abusive city maintains its actual condition, both in the physical, social, and legal way. Yet it receives a scattered project, an environmental-natural-technologic system that finds room in the residual and open spaces of the urban tissue, a move that improves the ecologic performance, the mobility system, the net of collective spaces. In the last scenario, the abusive city disappears in the landscape by means of progressive abandoning steps that emerge as wide spots. The system profits from the dismantling and emptying of the lots occupied by low-quality buildings – articulating new demolition techniques and economic incentives – and experiments new forms of “second nature” and unheard collective functions.