Body, Town Planning, and Participation. The Roles of Young People and Sport

The complexity of the challenges currently faced by the European cities requests integrated answers that can be offered only through an interdisciplinary and flexible approach in the governance. A pioneering, while deeply rooted in the history of the cities, perspective could be provided through the observation of the urban environment by the point of view of the body. This ground-breaking viewpoint should be integrated with the implementation of citizens' participation in planning to ensure the sustainability of the actions; this study focused on the involvement of young people. The relationship between body and town planning evidences a lack of systematic and specific studies, primarily considering those connecting theoretical and empirical aspects. The research had been carried out following two levels of hypotheses. The first, at theoretical level, aimed to demonstrate the connections between the body and the town planning. The second, at empirical level, intended to prove the pragmatism of the participation as a way of planning the city. The purposes of the research were the analysis of the relationships among the body, the public space, and the town planning; the description of the participatory methods and techniques used to plan the spaces; the emphasizing of the specific needs and wishes of the young people; the observation of the places in which the planning meets the body's ways of using the spaces. The overall objective of the research was to investigate experiences of participatory planning of public spaces in four study cases chosen for their town planning history and for the participatory and body facilitating policies: Barcelona, Paris, some cities in Finland, and Ferrara, in Italy. Within each study case, several subcases have been examined. The research was qualitative, interpretative, deductive, socio-diachronic, and idiographic based on a multiple and comparative case study method. The tools were observations, key informant interviews, and documentary research. According to the results of my study, the theoretical hypothesis is proved: the body has been a disregarded protagonist of the urban scene. The empirical hypothesis is largely demonstrated even if the study brings out that the participation is an effective way to plan the city when the projects are custom-made and based on an accurate study of the context: there are no answers that can be applied throughout. The involvement of citizens in town planning might constitute the appropriate answer to the increasing requirement of enhancing the direct, deliberative forms of democracy and the sustainable development. The good town planning practices are built around the very substance of the body that represents a true indicator of the quality of life in the urban environment.