Il quartiere che resiste: un esperimento di gestione partecipata

How process of community empowerment and reterritorialization is organized? What kind of «bottom-up» practices can implement forms of active participation in collective space management? The research presented here is inspired by these questions and, in order to concentrate the level of analysis on the practices, it was decided to use an action-research approach, for a geography based on a proactive presence of the researcher. The case study is a collective mobilization that springs from the defense of a public space: Casale Alba 1 in the Park of Aguzzano, a symbolic place for the identity of the Rebibbia suburb. To counter the decision of the municipal administration to entrust the management of the farmhouse to private associations, the Forum for the Protection of the Park of Aguzzano was set up: an informal network composed of citizens, associations, neighborhood committees, as well as from the local senior citizen center and two self-managed spaces, connected to the universe of social movements. From parade to walks, from public assemblies to conferences, from historical research to cultural initiatives (with the indigenous Zerocalcare): a set of practices were implemented by the Forum to create a form of «bottom-up» participation in the management of its own territory. Analysis is focused on these practices because they seem to move the sense of local community, creating sense, consensus and dissent, but above all prefiguring a more general evolution of the relationship between spaces and communities.