Transformations underway in cities and their peripheries call for an in-depth examination of urban regeneration, suburban regeneration and integrated requalification in order to build a project model for development and change. While suburbs provide examples of environmental degradation, social disadvantage, poor housing, poverty, marginality and abandonment, they can also evolve into urban communities and become strategic resources for local regeneration. In the complex urban context of many metropolitan cities, a survey of the processes and tools used for requalifying these areas, of the actors involved in these processes, and of the objectives for urban regeneration is needed, as is an analysis of the outcomes of such processes where they have already taken place. These issues, in fact, have been little debated at a national and European level.
The main aim of the project is to examine whether regeneration of peripheral metropolitan areas is possible, and how to achieve it. That is, to analyse how the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of these areas, which are so often neglected and abandoned, could be conceived as a common good: a shared resource to be managed and reevaluated through cooperation between public and private actors and organized civil society. The study will focus on the suburbs of Rome: peripheral areas that are extremely disadvantaged and which are characterized by poverty, marginality and social exclusion. The research will adopt an integrated methodological approach, bringing together standard and non-standard techniques both in the exploratory and in the analytical stages. In particular, visual sociology will be used as a method for analyzing the socio-territorial dimension.
"Urban regeneration", because it is able to valorize and reinterpret territories, especially those that show critical levels of deterioration, is a priority theme in policies of sustainable metropolitan development. Valorizing these areas not only promote a society based on beauty, providing residents with well-organized, organic landscapes, but can also revitalize collective practices and functions, reviving a sense of community and social identity. Property speculation, deterioration and isolation can cause urban territories to lose their clarity and coherence. There is therefore a call for strategies to "give back" to inhabitants a social fabric that can act as a visual, cultural and identity point of reference. The regenerative capacity and commercial potential of these social and spatial landscapes can create new ways of living and working in the suburbs. New jobs and services can be created, reducing petty crime and remodeling urban landscapes based on the new demands of social actors from the public and private sphere.
Existing research on this subject have described suburbs as potential areas of social and community development. It is thus important to identify the existence of networks and public/private actors that favour the birth - or rebirth - of physical spaces, the factors that encourage an urban regeneration, the role of investments (public and private), the relationship between individuals and the territory they belong to, and the commonalities among urban and social dimensions.
The study is innovative because the topic is not only rooted in the social sphere, involving citizens' quality of life, but also in the protection of the territory and its recovery as an economic resource. The study can thus also support public and private actors who intend to carry out urban requalification projects (from abandoned or unused areas to those used daily by their inhabitants).
Analyzing the regeneration of peripheric areas can be a starting point for the rebirth of the whole territory, owing to the use of new tools and technologies. It can produce a new socio-economic "Renaissance" able to redefine the fabric of the city as a whole and to include those social classes which are currently struggling with the process of urbanization.
The study is also innovative because it experiments with integrating different dimensions and subjects, which is the challenge local development policies face today. It will also encourage the creation of a lively cultural and intellectual urban community and trigger activities linked to the cultural and knowledge economy. Requalifying suburbs means creating a community that develops social identity and relations that become resources for civil action, social change and the development of policies for social cohesion. The fact that the study focuses on a local dimension allows it to fully understand local needs while also defining policies that can strengthen and enhance the social capital of the areas in which they are enacted.
Owing to the methodology adopted, the study aims to enhance existing knowledge and identify concrete actions that can revitalize urban landscapes, construct a shared awareness of the public good, and activate operations for the repossession of public spaces. The exploratory analysis of the territories and their characteristics will thus not only be based on interviews with witnesses (institutional figures), but also on a bottom-up approach that involves local citizens. Only in this way can the study fully comprehend residents' belongingness, degree of sociability, use of their neighbourhood, and level of social participation, as well as the ability of local and institutional subjects to attract their interest. Furthermore, the visual sociology techniques which will be applied to the study of the territory will offer a valuable support at a cognitive and heuristic level, allowing the morphology of the areas, their structure, the urban/architectural styles, and the relationship between citizens and the space they use to be analyzed.
The leitmotif of the study is the principle adopted by most socio-territorial analyses, based on the work of Norberg-Schulz: that human identity presupposes a place-based identity.