The iceberg, the stage, and the kitchen: Neglected public places and the role of design-led interventions

The chapter focuses on urban open spaces and in-between spaces left over after planning processes, increasingly considered a central yet neglected urban asset to improve socio-cultural inclusion and development. In particular, it looks at the approaches, strategies, and tactics designers and urban practitioners used in addressing the need for inclusivity in activating neglected public spaces, and setting the conditions for citizens to renegotiate their sense of belonging. It aims to highlight “catalysts” for triggering spontaneous tactics of placemaking and translate them into replicable design indications to initiate the process of regeneration and test the feasibility of longer changes. It first frames the operative role of spatial design and planning in relation to these superfluous landscapes in a historical and critical perspective; then it analyzes three paradigmatic examples representing three different answers to the need for social affordance and epitomizing three distinct major lines of thought. Finally, it describes how designers have devised new ways of enabling different forms of spatial appropriation of public spaces to generate a new sense of collective belonging that could encourage people to take care of them, both as part of a universal right to the city and as an effective institutional urban management strategy.