Designing the City of People 4.0 Reflections on Strategic and Sustainable Urban Design After COVID-19 Pandemic

1 How Covid-19 has opened our eyes The inertia of custom has been interrupted by the trauma of the Pandemic. Will it be possible to turn this tragedy into an opportunity? We will be able to do this by discovering that many conflicts that we have inherited – starting with that between tradition and innovation – are in fact dialectics to be activated positively in the season of the fourth industrial revolution. 2 How people experience the city If we recognize that the recent settlement is inhospitable, we must also claim the “right to the city” for the suburbs, overcome the conflicts between people and space and between body and environment, and discover that it is possible to reorganize the places for the city community, also thanks to people's new willingness to adopt correct lifestyles and to recover the social dimension of mobility. 3 How people experience their home and the public spaces Pandemic has made us realize that we can overcome the conflict that has always been between home and work, connecting presence and remote, selecting mobility. If this happens, we will be able to return to using urban spaces and streets for the relational value of commercial activities and strengthen community ties thanks also to neighborhood e-commerce. 4 How human languages change Remote connections during the Pandemic have led us to appreciate the truth of connectivity, to rethink information and communication and, in general, to overcome the conflict between form and substance, appreciating frugality as a possible feature of contemporary life after the pandemic. 5 How improve our real-world settings What tools must we use to rethink the city after the pandemic? We have to work with the urban project in its strategic and participatory dimension, working on the settlement to be regenerated and we have to promote a civil commitment that allows Public Administrations to catch up on the delay accrued with the private sector in recently season of strategic philanthropism.