Hybridization as a new paradigm of urban and territorial development: a glance over a newly EU emerging city

The present paper aims to explore the urban hybridization phenomenon as an integral part of contemporary society growth dynamics and spatial organization. In particular, it will be examined its diffusion within newly emerging post-iron curtain European contexts, in order to grasp the ongoing dimension of the process and outline some of its main features. It is important to notice that the peculiarity of these specific environments is due, above all, to their rapid transformation producing the almost simultaneous formation of new urban asset patterns and development models. A core part of the work will be constituted by the analysis of some of the typical diffused city hybrid forms, paying major attention to the progressively heterogeneous landscapes and ground-scapes juxtaposition, along with the increasing urban edges uncertainty. The latter’s alteration and proliferation will be intended as a rather complex evolution process and, as a result, requiring a vaster and multilayer periphery cognition formulation. There will be treated, therefore, some of the contemporary spatial configurations generally identifiable as: new public open spaces and container-like attractors, market streets, new city gates and highway-scapes, new specialized areas, downtown and super-sites urban hybrids. Furthermore, the study will take advantage of the comparison between newly emerging (with central attention to the Sofia City context) and already affirmed urban realities (as the Milan City context), so to put in evidence some of the common mechanisms and generative factors acting throughout the different social, political and territorial milieus.