The City at the Crossroads: New Realities and New Challenges for the Contemporary European City

Abstract

The advent of a new paradigm of informational and cultural representation (after two centuries of development and crystallization of the industrial, and therefore social, paradigm) has caused significant mutations in society and the planet. Such mutations, confronting long-established socio-political systems and structures, carry with them states of great discomfort and even manifest crisis in multiple systems of governance. The difficulty reaction from institutions has even been reciprocated (intentionally or not) by multiple appropriations of the public action. At the same time, however, a series of new social and political opportunities emerge. The new paradigm, strongly based on the composition and production of informational and cultural structures, is particularly evident in cities, once again the mainstay of civilizational evolution. With this background, a state-of-the-art picture of the contemporary city (namely, the contemporary European city) is systematized by seven points: position, competitiveness, imagery, physical expression, personality, restlessness and hope. Through these seven points, the proposals are aimed at developing (also new) regulatory structures, but especially structures of (socio-political) action of a more collective sense, given the new realities and new challenges.