Abstract

The city of the future must be able to compete in the international scene through the enhancement and the promotion of its cultural identity. It should be in a position to innovate by attracting, not just promoting, the creative class to generate new sustainable future. To make this happen upgrading works of renewal of the urban governance will be necessary to enable the continuous improvement of quality and performance of urban regeneration projects, pointing to greater competitiveness, cohesion and cooperation projects. The new urban agenda should contain within them principles and actions to produce new urban culture, regenerate places and aggregate the milieu. Design discipline facilitates this reality by proposing itself as the necessary vector for a changing of attitude related to urban development. Design owns the skill to solve problems, to respond to popular needs and provide for the widespread lack. Indeed, it’s possible to recognize innovative urban development processes (unlike other forms of coded promotion and planning) which are attributable to the design, the wide extension of its powers and the plurality of his roles. The capitalization of the opportunity given by the design skills to the contexts where is planned the urban change, strengthens the direct contact with the real needs and moods of the population with an active (bottom-up) approach, both analytical and practical. In that way is possible to switch from the typical applied research methodologies and practices to new design actions that can really join administrators and population, as well as historically design connects the production community to the population. Urban-scaled strategic design looks above all at social macroshiftings,to crystallize them into design development logics. The design driven process-catalyst of innovation should become the strategic director of every single action in the framework of the exploitation process.