NO-CITY: Designing across the Urban Pluriverse

This paper presents some of the results of NO-CITY SALARIA, part of an interuniversity research and educational programme between Roma Tre University, the University of Camerino (UNICAM), and IUAV University of Venice. The programme was launched to explore the urban-rural dichotomy in three different territories of the Italian peninsula. Each area cuts through a particular urban condition up until the most peripheral regional areas of the country, namely the so-called “inner areas,” identified by the 2014 National Strategy of the same name (SNAI). Challenging city-centric or urban-centric visions, today reinforced by the SNAI, this contribution presents some exercises of imagination that show possible ways to overcome dual territorial approaches. Methodologically, the study adopts the transect as a conceptual and practical tool that serves to address the territorial dialectic in a novel way. Fluctuating along the transect, the onward-backward movement blurs the imaginary line that profoundly limits a more complex urban discourse. Affirming the interchangeable and intrinsic value of both urban and rural realities, i.e. of each gradient of today’s urban condition, the design speculations thus show the potential of the pluriverse of forms emerging from this continuous exchange.