Urban Planning and Good Living

This essay interprets "good living" as a condition that strictly depends on the realization of a desired development model, with a strong interrelation with the notions of "sustainability" and "transformative resilience". In this perspective cities are the field of application of all the challenges of "good living", and urban planning, as a disciplinary field that includes a vast set of practices for their continuous and conscious transformation [Secchi 2000], is one of the main tools of change. This essay addresses the connection between good living and urban planning, in the perspective of a reflection on the disciplinary changes in progress. The aim is to highlight how the sustainability and resilience objectives that dominate the discourse on cities contribute to reorienting practices and modifying the tools of contemporary urban planning, focusing on the experience of Emilia-Romagna region and of the city of Bologna in particular. The essay focuses on planning as a project of transition, founded on the perspective of "working on the existing city" that feeds the current debate on "urban regeneration". The authors examine the two aspects of "urban regeneration": from one side, the work on "la ville", the physical transformation of the city; from the other side, the work on "la cité", or the city of citizens, their participation and their capacity of being agents of change. The multitude of individual practices intervening in the co-production of the city, claim the recognition of their potential as a critical mass of innovations, inspiring to build a new, integrated paradigm of urban regeneration. The relationship between the practices and the form of the city, provides invitation to integrate this perspective into original opportunities for urban regeneration projects, where good living is achieved thanks to an operational dialogue between traditional urban planning and the most innovative "urban practices".