Covid-19 pandemic and public spaces: improving quality and flexibility for healthier places

Abstract

The current Covid-19 pandemic has interested the whole word, changing habits and use of places and cities. In the lockdown period, cities and public spaces became completely empty and new urban landscapes substituted the previous ones, transforming the private in public. Children, young and elder people were those who mainly had problems: to them, real life was negated at the time of their life in which this is more important. In Italy, the second country after China which was interested by the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, the reopening of all the public spaces happened after 2 months of closure. This allowed again “in presence” social interactions, although in respect of the physical distance, confirming the importance of these places for all people. Starting from these premises, the aim of this paper is to present the results of a study carried in the framework of the Horizon 2020 research project Urban Maestro, New Governance Strategies for Urban Design, of the ISMed-National Research Council post Covid research, and of the INU Community Public Space, the last two initiatives coordinated by the author. The objective is to identify the relationships between theory and practice of the Charter of Public Space after 10 years of its creation, and verify its validity, in particular, in this Covid-19 emergency period. The Charter of Public Space was adopted during the second Biennial of Public Space held in Rome in 2013 and presented at the Quito Habitat 3 Conference in 2016. In those events many principles were used for the New Urban Agenda discussion concerning quality of public spaces. To achieve the goal of the research, an original method of analysis was created and about thirty case studies were collected, nine of which will be illustrated in this paper. The cases were selected because they follow many principles of the Charter and are then characterized by quality of design and flexibility of use. Accordingly, the update of some principles of the Charter was necessary to meet the new Covid-19 pandemic needs.