Potential city and concrete utopia. Figures of thought for an action research

Is it possible to rethink the phenomenon of city and the policies that concern it according to the guidelines that the Rock project has attempted without also questioning the conceptual frameworks, or rather the practices and forms of habitual thought that have focused on it? The adequate answer, as far as the conceptual dimension and the reference framework of the theoretical-practical tools are concerned, seemed to be that of accompanying the research with a reflection and a redefinition of the categories through which it was interpreted, both in the sense of understanding and performing. In other words, it was necessary to shift the point of view, setting aside an ideational dimension placed before acknowledging reality and making the findings of the research feedback on its own modalities of detection, thus activating a self-reflective and recursive procedure, as Tim Ingold recently recommended in his reflection on making. Reflecting this methodology, here we chose to take up two notions that we have tried to formulate or redefine over the course of the research, those of "potential city" and "concrete utopia". In both cases we are dealing with a conception of effectuality that recalls what continues to act and to renew itself without exhausting itself because it exists only in the form of a process, only insofar as it is effective, it produces effects in time and in the world as opposed to the passive acceptance of empirical reality, the superficial level of events.