Ricerc@Sapienza

The street as a meeting place for public life appeared to have fallen into oblivion. Urban culture had announced its death, first with the apodictic proclamations of Le Corbusier, intent on separating pedestrian and vehicular flows and creating roads inside buildings or road-shaped buildings. Later, in the cybernetic era and the age of "non-places", contemporary life seems to be constrained to virtual squares animated by social networks. Despite this, the road remains a space of encounter and experimentation, a theatre of daily life and a stage for cultural events, once again in vogue as a tool for recovering sustainable and healthy lifestyles. The road continues to offer spaces for people and to nurture urban studies. Recent research, conferences and exhibitions are once again discussing this fundamental element of the city's structure.The essay introduces, through an historical evolution of the space of the street, this issue of Rassegna dedicated to a reflection on what the street means for us today and how it has been transformed in contemporary projects.