Polipheries: Heterotopic Cities and Plural Communities of a Different Present in Southern Europe

In Europe, cities have always been theatres that put utopian thinking on the stage. The Europeancity is a “mediation between mediations”, to quote Henri Lefebvre, one of the most lucidphilosophers of the city, since the city is a permanent interface for several types of relationships:relationships between individuals, structured and unstructured relationships, and relationships withand between social, institutional, and normative organisations. And in an increasingly urban worldwhere most of the world’s population lives in cities, with levels close to 80% in Europe, cities arethe living organisms that breath the breath of change, especially the change in the relationships,visions, and responsibilities needed to reactivate the future we want. However, contemporary citiesare also the places where inequalities and marginalities are emerging with ever greater virulence,triggering real epidemics that arise from the peripheral areas that are the most lacking in quality andequity, extending to the entire urban organism, and mining the cooperative status that is the basisof the birth of the city. The answer can not be a generic anti-urban sentiment, but it should be amore aware and responsible claim for the respect of the “right to the city”, which is not only a guaranteeof essential services, but a right to work, participation, safety, reception, cohesion, welfare.It is a right to the future.