Buskers' uses of public space. A case to explore the fundamentals and by-products of administrative rationality

How urban spaces are shaped in public controversies? This paper explores for how cities get organized through the relation between news, public policies and everyday uses of spaces, as embodied in practices and artefacts. It presents current and provisional results of a project named “Penelope – the emerging pattern of urban texture”. Penelope’s challenge is to tackle this theme adopting a practice based approach (Schatzki et. al, 2001; Gherardi, 2005). Penelope consists in a qualitative research of the repertory of practices embedded in the city of Trento, a medium sized italian city characterized by a high quality of life and a pervasive presence of the Public Administration. In this paper we focus particularly on the discipline of public spaces beginning from the controversy about street musicians’ performances in the city centre.