A green and shared city – National Geographic Italia

Today, more than ever, the desire for the city has turned into a desire for common and shared spaces, thus returning to the very origin of the town: in fact, cities derive from communities, from the search for a life together, for mutual protection and common progress.

After a historical overview of the city’s development since the 19th century, Andreas Kipar describes today’s city. Today, he says, “We have entered a new phase of urbanism: climate change, digitalisation, and an overwhelming desire for nature are increasingly becoming the drivers of a new model in imagining the future city. Even the rigid and predefined boundaries between the historic city, the suburbs and the so-called countryside are continually blurring: What holds the new construct of this infinite city together is precisely public space, which is multifunctional, informal and adaptable to the ever-increasing demands of ecological transition.”

Not only has the pandemic restricted social life, but it has also promoted a new awareness of how the city should be conceived. Many cities are moving in this direction; Paris and Milan, for example, have one thing in common: they want to bring the human scale back into urban life. Only by doing so can the city “once again become the symbolic representation of a new world, in search of a renewed equilibrium with its nature.”