Cities and skills for integration: what can urban planning do? Experiences and reflections between public spaces and collective interest for urban and community (smart) resilience

Abstract

Immigration and integration of foreign communities is a condition that strongly affects the form and the meaning of public space. In contexts that are new to the phenomenon, there may be an occasion to revise the protocols and models for the development of new spatial relationships, based on the presence of communities that are no longer homogeneous. The theme of urban regeneration due to the presence of migrant communities has been addressed in various ways and from different points of view, often focusing on the creation of urban spaces capable of improving livability, rarely with the creation of integration processes or the construction of new urban identities. However, a resilient point of view, in ecological and social terms, can allow a new perspective on the way in which the multiple presence of communities that are no longer “original” has radically changed the sense of urban space. This contribution reports some experimental experiences on how the city and the community in progress can develop a coordinated system of actions able to act on the theme of reception and integration, working in the perspective of urban resilience and acting on social policies and on the spatial relevance of integration programs. Through cooperative learning, in a process of applied research with experts in the social habit of four Sicilian cities (Ragusa, Catania, Caltanissetta, and Palermo) the tested integration policies will be evaluated not in terms of melting pot, but in terms of identifying identity spaces able to build a sense of community