Ricerc@Sapienza

Functionalism - the matrix of the Modern Movement - introduced the theme of the pedestrian use of public space. Already in the early 1900's, intellectuals dealing with cities began to think about urban facilities, the minimum unit of neighborhood and, consequently, the distances and pedestrian accessibility of places as a constituent element of modern urban planning. This happens as a consequence of the rational organization of the city: a hierarchical and multipolar city.
The issue of accessibility takes on new importance when it goes from being just a question of urban space planning to a question of health and its costs; when this issue is linked to the beneficial effects of the movement and is taken up by the World Health Organization with the identification of the 5/10,000 daily steps for a better lifestyle.
Walking is not only useful for urban plans but is also an act of self-care. The solicitation to move on foot making some facilities easily reachable, the presence of places of aggregation, the continuity of public space, are therefore placed at the center of urban strategies of renovation and transformation. At the same time, the need to guarantee an isotropy of urban quality through the distribution of interventions and a multiplication of their impact through their networking is sought.
The paper critically analyzes a series of interventions that have interpreted the possibilities arising from the sedimentation and contamination of these principles: the Centopiazze program, promoted in Rome in 1994 by the Rutelli administration; the Uma Praça em cada Barrio project in Lisbon presented in 2012 by the administration and received shortly afterwards in the national program; the NYC Plaza Program launched in New York by Mayor Bloomberg in the second decade of 2000 with the advice of the Dutch Studio of Ghel. These are different initiatives that have had profoundly different outcomes despite being united by a vision of an egalitarian city in which the right to public space is one of the founding elements of the Right to the City. The differences are therefore investigated in order to identify the reasons for their outcomes.