New ways of living

In our society, the phenomenon of tourism is in many ways one of the most important processes of urban transformation and updating of the meanings that cities assume as a result of the large number of visitors. Marco D’Eramo writes in “Il selfie del mondo” how our age can be defined as “the age of tourism”. These currents now affect the city and the urban tissue, already overwhelmed by this phenomenon that is difficult to monitor and assess. Alessandro Balducci, in his reading of Urba@nit, on the occasion of the presentation of the 4th report on cities, writes that “The society of reference has changed rapidly and profoundly in recent decades. New infrastructures are [...] the basis for the development of the platform economy. [...] there is the category of the so-called lean-platforms that provide services that are not available to them: Airbnb, Uber, etc.. Airbnb, the world’s largest home rental company, does not own a home. These notes are based on the research “Spaces for temporary inhabitants” carried out as part of the PhD course in Knowledge and Innovation in the Heritage Project, which studies and analyzes innovative housing models for the needs of new temporary residents and knowledge workers. “The user interface of these new housing models is changing and mutable, so we can speak in contemporary cities of temporary inhabitants, that is all those who in a dynamic of continuous flows leads young students, freelancers, buyers, businessmen, artists, tourists, to cross cities and post-metropolitan territories, in an extensive idea of “an urban that goes beyond the idea of the city as a defined unit”. A. Balducci, PRIN Beyond the Metropolis.The research that this contribution will be about starts from the observation of this phenomenon and tries to deepen the effects that this phenomenon has on urban space, looking at new forms of co-housing/co-living, trying to transform a simple traveller into a temporary inhabitant of the city. Cities will have to respond to these events without distorting their identity too much. In order to update and better understand these complex phenomena, we started from the similar questions posed by the Brithis Council for the Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 “How do we live today? But above all, how will we live tomorrow?”; There are a multitude of structures in Europe that have been adapted to these new needs to ensure different housing solutions and a mix of living and working spaces, in a shared form. Some of the cases considered among the most significant, studied and analysed by the writer, are: “Crociferi” in Venice and Kalkbreite in Zurich.