Urban interiors. Vision for a fragmented territory

The crisis that is affecting much of the western world has a great impact in the South European cities. Urban shrinking is one of the main phenomenon. Over the fifty percent of the European cities are marked by significant demographic decline and progressive ageing of the population. Turin shows many features of these conditions, especially in the southern part of the city that was developed as company town. In Turin, as in many other cities, the major initiatives to face these problems consist in capabilities programs (bottom-up initiatives) and actions of abandonment, recycling and re-naturalization (top-down strategies). Urban farming, new form of cohabitation, associations, occupation of public spaces with informal activities are some of the most practiced and sustainable initiatives that characterizes the public and private urban surplus in the city. As result of this phenomena in the south of Turin is clearly visible that many portions of the city are becoming more and more introverse. The aim of this paper is to open a debate about this condition in order to reflect about how it is possible consider it as a resource and re-write this difficult situation as opportunity.