Dynamics of Periphery

Figure 1. Palermo, Ecomuseo del mare. Photo: author
Reboot Ethics and Politics of Cities
In Europe, cities have always been theatres that put utopian thinking on the stage. The European
city is a “mediation between mediations”, to quote Henri Lefebvre, one of the most lucid
philosophers of the city, since the city is a permanent interface for several types of relationships:
relationships between individuals, structured and unstructured relationships, and relationships with
and between social, institutional, and normative organisations. And in an increasingly urban world
where most of the world’s population lives in cities, with levels close to 80% in Europe, cities are
the living organisms that breath the breath of change, especially the change in the relationships,
visions, and responsibilities needed to reactivate the future we want. However, contemporary cities
are also the places where inequalities and marginalities are emerging with ever greater virulence,
triggering real epidemics that arise from the peripheral areas that are the most lacking in quality and
equity, extending to the entire urban organism, and mining the cooperative status that is the basis
of the birth of the city. The answer can not be a generic anti-urban sentiment, but it should be a
more aware and responsible claim for the respect of the “right to the city”, which is not only a guarantee
of essential services, but a right to work, participation, safety, reception, cohesion, welfare.
It is a right to the future. And the most powerful antidote for the anti-city epidemic is to reaffirm the
city of inherently urban rights: access to city resources and the opportunity to experience an urban
life that is alternative to the logic and uneven processes of industrialisation and of capital accumulation,
the to quality of relational life, and to the opportunity to increase our wellbeing in non-egoistic
INTRODUCTION
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