Open spaces: the new merchandise of contemporary city

In the transformation of their spaces, cities record the flows of the movement, the needs of everyday life, the experiences of sociality, the modification of collective uses: signs and materials, often "resistant" to the project, which nevertheless determine the destiny of the cities giving back meaning to the places that transform. Today, compared to the themes of the recovery and transformation of open spaces in the city, the paths that the architectural project cross seem to separate into different choices and strategies, also depending on the economic, political and geographical conditions of the countries in which these transformations take place. The public space, in a new and more inclusive meaning which widens its borders to include the whole open space of the city, still offers itself to our attention as the first place where the "spirit of the time" it’s completely expressed. From the analysis of the experiments that the project accomplishes in these places, the attitudes and orientations of a project that, in Italy, find declinations and indicate different directions not only compared to the rest of Europe but also far from what we can observe in the other continents of the world, are traceable: today, strategies that derive from a "mending" theory seem to be accredited and urgently require a critical reflection on the new role of the architect and of the public intervention in the processes of governance of the recovery and transformation of the city's territory.