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Editorial

way of working, of resting, of having fun, of curing his illnesses, of
travelling, his way of perceiving and planning his life, his way of
planning his future and that of his descendants.
That is why man is the centre, the fulcrum, the focus of this new
social dimension, in which the city provides a crossway and an
intersection.
In the blueprint, in the plan, in the intuition of the city of the future,
one cannot plausibly refer to the Greek polis, to the acropolis, to the
agora. These were the basic elements of the first nucleus of our social
life, which are more often than not referred to, as a recollection, a hint,
a memory. But if there is a basic anachronism in the attempt to merely
propose to bring back a type of society which no longer exists, it is also
true that referring to the past is useful, and we could actually say
crucial, within the social and cultural context in which we must strive
actively to define our future. We ignore how the first urban planners in
Attica planned their cities. We don’t know whether they asked the help
of sociologists and politicians, or whether perhaps these were
resonsable for certain choices. There certainly were practical,
functional, military priorities, necessities due to a very real struggle for
survival, which re-emerged in very similar terms in the Italian
Communes of the Middle Ages.
To stretch further the natural boundaries and to ensure a military
independence and above all to relieve demographic pressure. The
industrial revolution in our own times has done the rest.
We must now leave the stage to the debates of our time, for which
I think we can quote a fragment of Simonides (“the city is man’s
teacher”) or an assertion by Thomas Fuller (“men, not houses, make
up a city”). Both quotations point out that we cannot avoid starting by
focusing once again on man, on his essence, on his being at the centre
of life, of his cultural and spiritual itinerary. We should not so much
explain the city as if we were urban planners, but rather ask ourselves
which kind of man can plan and endorse lost, tentacular cities. Maybe 4
only an unsure, suffering kind of man, to whom we must restore his n.
lost dignity. For this reason, also in the case which we have taken to - II
heart, the relationship between city and man is crucial to attempt what
Anno

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