“We’re about to land, please fasten your seatbelts.”
How many times you experienced it!
And it is the only occasion
you have the chance to see from above
the most incredible, powerful, popular invention of humankind:
the city.
And it is also the only time
you surely thought,
“But how can it be that millions of people,
for thousands of years,
look for these places to be together, crowd together,
choose to live not all separated
but together, in what we call city.”
And maybe you have also asked yourselves,
“Is all this positive or negative?
Would it be better to strengthen or limit this phenomenon?”
Actually, this is a story that goes back in time.
This is Manchester,
in 1845 it was the largest and most populous city in the West.
As you can see, maybe it was nothing special.
Here began
what I define the longest trial in history
with the most unexpected sentence.
And the trial is, obviously, a trial to the cities
it was started by these two guys, then become quite famous,
Karl Marx and his friend Engels.
They strolled around Manchester
and did not see what you see today
when you spend your weekend in New York or Paris.
Imagine: they saw narrow streets, no sewers,
poverty everywhere,
pollution, but not the pollution today
the real smog
made up of particles of carbon
that prevented people from seeing one another.
And of course, the two wrote a book
titled “The Condition of the Working Class in England,”
accusing the city of all the evils of the world.
The city was the cause
of pollution, insecurity, poverty
and the only solution
was to limit this phenomenon as much as possible.
It was an unhealthy attitude,
a necessity sometimes, but to be contained.
And from this, over the years,
between 1850 and the beginning of the twentieth century
disciplines and instruments were also born
to limit this phenomenon
as it was probably the cause of all the problems of the world.
Some sciences were born:
city planning, that you see behind me.
It is a terrible thing, maybe you met it sometimes,
which has some bizarre tools.
One is called “building regulations,”
that is, when you need to change a wall at home
and you have to do hundreds of practices
and then the “planning,”
that is the idea that there is someone from above
who succeeds in imagining
the future of a city over the next 50 years.
Only him, only in his head!
Or, and lastly, the “zoning,”
which fortunately not all of you knew
but can even say and imagine
what should happen in the future
in each centimeter of the city
“Here a home, here an office, here a theater.”
And then let’s also imagine films and culture
the latter firmly against the cities.
In the 1980s, the series of films
“Escape from New York, Escape from Los Angeles”
became famous,
where Manhattan has become an uncontrollable island
a city full of violence and fear,
a city to be left.
Do you remember?
It becomes a prison
where all the wicked of the world are thrown from above
and slaughter each other forever.
The interesting thing about this trial is that, like all the trials
is a little bit long-lasting even for Italy
from 1845 to about 20 years ago
sentence has arrived.
Unique case in science,
that sentence is a judgment of total acquittal.
And that’s not all!
Reading the reasons of this sentence,
it turns out that
the city is not the cause of all the problems of the world
but, given the population growth,
it is the solution
to all the major issues facing humankind.
Demography, pollution, environmental sustainability
security and economic development,
job creation, and the ability to create knowledge.
And, in fact, this sentence also lists three important elements
that justify the ability of the city to improve the world.
The first is density.
You see behind me
the photo of my city from above
and the density, that is, the more people,
activities
and imaginations can stand in the same square meter
the more this positive effect occurs.
The second is diversity.
Not only are there so many things in a small place
but also these things are different.
There are poor and rich people, people from all over the world,
people who love football
and others who – like me –
ignore even the name of the most famous footballer.
The third element is creativity.
This is a bizarre event where thousands of people
bring a table, a chair from their home, food,
and they gather and eat together in a square for one night.
Creativity is this ability to imagine in cities.
Then, here’s my idea.
Actually, the city eventually acquitted
and somehow pointed out as a solution
is a mechanism.
A city is not defined by its size, or its inhabitants,
we are all used to compare this or that city
for its inhabitants, its size, GDP produced.
No!
The city is a mechanism.
The city works and solves the great issues of humanity
because it is like a black box.
It’s a great mechanism that transforms different interests,
individuals coming from different stories and regions
and who have different goals.
If they were forced to travel together in a car
they would lit up all day.
The city manages to transfer magically and consistently
those individual interests into collective well-being.
And so, the definition of city is no longer a static definition.
The city saves the world as it constantly
creates this positive transformation mechanism.
Therefore, a city may also lose its status.
We all know it, some cities in Italy, even big cities,
after thousands of years of history
have temporarily suspended this ability.
Or other cities, perhaps neglected, perhaps never considered,
that at this time or for certain periods
succeed in being this virtuous mechanism.
And then we must not be afraid of the city.
We must move
from mechanisms and instruments to contain the urban phenomenon
to mechanisms and tools that accelerate development
I will give you two examples
of the work I am conducting in recent years
and which are not afraid of urban phenomenon
but are trying to feed this mechanism
with utopia and courage.
The first example is Milan.
This is a picture of the city from the above, a satellite view,
and here are highlighted some parks not all,
but a set of little known greenery,
in the city center,
ten minutes by underground from the Duomo.
My idea, and the journey I’ve been doing for a long time
with this map around the city
is to name this set of greenery with courage
because the city is believed
to be the world’s largest urban stage,
72 km of greenery.
An orbital park that you can walk every day, as I did.
A park that can be imagined
as an element of diversity and strength,
believing in the positive things of the systems we live in,
not letting us destroy from the traffic rhetoric
and the 20th century rhetoric of cities
as “repellent enemies,” cement.
I do not know if you all have this rhetoric in your mind.
The second example,
is a city that is a few thousand kilometers from here,
I have worked there.
It’s Buenos Aires, in Argentina, it is the capital
and a few years ago it asked itself:
What to do about this city in 2030?
They were all scared;
Buenos Aires more than in other countries
is the magnet of the whole nation,
the place where everyone is looking for a chance.
But this mechanism
which is the definition of the city I’ve proposed
was somehow jammed.
Violence and poverty derived also from a wider national crisis.
And what was the temptation?
To limit development, as usual.
But I have proposed three strategies with courage
with the same ability to believe in the power of this mental weapon
as the cities
as with the living stage
even in the case of Buenos Aires.
These strategies accelerate development
You see here a greater density, that is, a greater population,
greater infrastructure,
and the creation of pedestrian or green spaces.
You see, this is the density
The plan says in 2030
we must not limit ourselves but increase by one million more inhabitants,
build by replacing smaller districts with denser ones,
calling not only the population of Argentina
but of the whole world and gathering the creatives
And then, building an infrastructure system
even on iron
that allows to believe even more in this development and speed it up.
Then, as I said,
creating spaces of sociality, green and pedestrian areas.
These three strategies together
bet on the development of Buenos Aires
aware that cities are the solution to all the problems in the world.
So, when you will land once again
and maybe, choosing the seat near the window,
you will look from above on this great invention of humanity
that is the city,
you will have a different feeling in your heart
and you will answer to that question
you have asked yourselves many times
and perhaps you will be proud to live
in what I call the “century of cities.”
Thank you.
(Applause)
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