Ricerc@Sapienza

Based on a collaboration of Italian and U.S. scholars, this book presents co-generated, grounded practice stories, or “profiles of practitioners” in the emerging 21st Century Italian context. In the last twenty years, John Forester has argued that first person voice, practice-focused oral histories can make significant contributions to undergraduate and graduate education, in both urban studies and professional planning programs.

One of the roles society expects by architecture is the ability to shape communities, remodel environments,
and influence behaviours in a predictable and positive way. Furthermore, architects claims for themselves the
professional skills to express social imagination through their architectural ideas and design. During the early 1960s a new idea of space and community emerged: the concept of placemaking raised and activists and personalities theorised the slogan "cities for people" and not only for cars and shopping centres.