Design in the Multidisciplinary Era: Collaborative Approaches to Cultural and Territorial Reactivation.

The new methodological approaches that have developed over the past decades have led to an ever-increasing rapprochement with communities as they can reactivate processes of re-appropriation of territorial identity. The use of similar terms referring to inclusive practices, often used as synonyms, such as co-design, co-creation, participatory design, and open design, immediately highlights some points to ponder. This paper aims to shed light on how design can build relationships by analyzing these contemporary methodologies, and through the comparison of three Italian cases of community involvement in the cultural and territorial reactivation processes. The best practices are selected based on the impact generated on the territory and communities, the size of the intervention - small, medium, and large - and the “competitive advantage” (Cangiano, 2019) that they created on the social substructure - an approach that ensures social resilience and is not built around profit. The comparison involved Torino City Lab, a Living Lab in northern Italy, and two cases from the south, namely Farm Cultural Park in Favara, Sicily, and Noi Ortadini in Matera, Basilicata. The purpose of the analysis is to synthesize territorial examples and models supporting regenerative visions in socio-cultural terms, comparing the various collaborative approaches in support of site-specific expressions of design.