Dialettica di distanza e prossimità nella quotidianità urbana: spunti per un’etica del vicinato.

The neighborly relationship is the most contingent of our relationships, determined by contiguity, by coexistence in the same space. The contribution aims to analyse the dialectical character of this relationship to show its ethical and political dimension. On the one hand, it presents itself as a “body to body” relationship, a co-presence of physical contact made up of smells, voices, noises: an intimacy that is, however, neither declared and not always desired. On the other hand, especially in large cities, with the development of digital technologies, physicality is losing its centrality in favour of the importance of virtual “places”: social ties are becoming increasingly deterritorialised and communities are increasingly disconnected from a particular space. Faced with the crisis of the neighborhood relationship, various proposals are emerging to recover this social bond: for example, the phenomenon of Social Streets, or organised groups to reduce the social isolation of the elderly. Building an ethics of proximity always requires as a condition a reciprocity with a supra-functional character.