Sala borsa: Plural presences and innovative public spaces

The chapter addresses the issue of contemporary public space. In the urban setting, social groups form different publics that become mutually inter-visible in public spaces: relational arenas, in which it is possible to learn living with strangers, recognizing the right to the city for all people. In contemporary city, some theories argue that we would assist to the crisis of public space. Indeed, the forming of a public realm is more difficult, because social groups build separate and self-segregating routes, and urban public spaces are increasingly privatized, controlled, and reorganized to be more compatible with the global city, the city-users, and the hypermobile upper classes. Shifting the attention to Sala Borsa (a public library in the centre of Bologna), the authors argue that the changes in the socio-spatial morphology of contemporary cities do not prevent the forming of a public arena, accessible also to the marginal groups, as the homeless. Because of its centrality, its free access, its innovative and multimedia environment, Sala Borsa is a crowded, lively, and symbolic public space. In this public library, social groups appropriate different spaces and times through the production of porous boundaries. Nevertheless, the identity of public-library-user taken once in Sala Borsa produces an inclusive regime of inter-visibility, where also homeless people are present.