What is Relation

Nowadays the city of the anonymity prevails over the city of sharing. We move in more and more dilated spaces and we expand our territories, but we consume the community life in impersonal places that, too often, are only for casual encounters. For this reason it becomes more and more crucial to design spaces with wide recognition, characterized by an “accumulation of belongings” that makes them feel like familiar to everyone: the city, avoiding the risk of self-celebration, can find the opportunity to become a representation of a collective imagination in the sum of individual stories. The challenge is to experience the city as a sequence of “interiors” that people can intensely inhabit and not just use, in which people can leave traces, share memories, and imprint daily gestures. Places that satisfy emotional as well as functional needs, bringing into play the symbolic and intangible components, maybe imperceptible, but which are so decisive in determining the identity structure of a city. It is the relational dimension that acquires also an aesthetic code. This chapter explores a relational approach for resilient and experiential cities.