The Everyday (in) Urbanism: What’s New on the Spot

The paper aims at measuring the influence that the everyday theme has exercised in the formation of the idea of space that is permeating the thought of many contemporary urban planners. Through the investigation of two recent approaches, the Italian and the American ones, the complex relationships between daily practices and urban spaces, in the continuous redefinition of the concepts of public and private sphere, are described. In this context, the Everyday Urbanists’ work had the merit to reveal and investigate the social possibilities offered by the patterns of everyday life. They were among the first to speak about a citizenship redefinition, process which has been increasingly debated by many scholars. Citizenship is thus turning to be less formal, while becoming more substantive and insurgent. The paper demonstrates that, according to this crucial change, new and meaningful relations between citizenship and planning can be established and that these are able to open planning practice up to the present ethnographical possibilities of the urban space, and to its tactical and polysemic dimensions.