Common Spaces: Collective Practices for Places of Transition.

In the last two decades, the concept of the common good has increasingly entered the debate around the processes of urban regeneration. Sometimes, it has been used as a manifesto to activate political consensus (especially, in Italy), others as a tool to design new alliances between public and private sectors capable of making socio-spatial transformation more sustainable economically and at a managerial level, and still others, it is a value that is claimed by informal groups in the processes of occupation of public or private spaces as a declaration of a collective right to act, transform, take part in the processes of cities transformation. These are just some of the meanings that the term has taken on in some recent situations (especially, in Turin), showing, on the one hand, an important capacity for innovation but also all its slipperiness. It can be said that it is certainly a term that introduces the idea of negotiation into the phenomena of spatial tensions by focussing on some relevant issues with respect to the role of the subjects and the ability of the project to synthesise within complex social processes. The ambition is, therefore, not to eliminate or pacify spatial tensions but to make them generative of new dynamics and design sensibilities.