Building an infrastructure of care. The role of design in rethinking community practices and collective spaces

This contribution is part of a broader debate on the role of urban and architectural design within the growing attention to processes of spatial regeneration, not only in urban contexts, focusing on practices of care and redefinition of space as an element of collective action outside neoliberal dictates. From the empirical observation of some ongoing processes, it is possible to deduce more general elements of reflection regarding the role of the designer and of space within commoning processes. How does the practice of design redefine itself in the context of actions that place at their centre a different doing from the productivist model within which the urban project has been placed in recent decades? What is the role of space as a medium of negotiation within a collective process that evolves with slow and uncertain times and modalities? These are some of the questions that drive our open reflection.