Quality and safety in public spaces: a new challenge in the post Covid-19 period

Aim of this paper is to present the results of a research carried in the framework of: the Urban Maestro. New Governance Strategies for Urban Design Horizon 2020 research project, the ISMed-CNR post-Covid researches and the INU Community Public Space, the latter coordinated by the author. The Urban Maestro Project - coordinated by the UCL and in partnership with UN-Habitat - "looks at the ways European cities are being designed and financed, focusing on innovative ways of generating and implementing urban spatial quality". Among the objective, the project has the comparison of the experiences in Europe to international practices. Accordingly, the author, as a member of the Advisory and Support Group, shared the Italian good practices in the public space field. The Community Public Space has the objective to collect best practices of public space in Italy, starting from the Charter of Public Space which was adopted during the second Biennial of Public Space held in Rome in 2013. The Charter is composed by 50 principles that are a sort of guidelines for liveable and sustainable public spaces. In order to comprehend the relationship between theory and practice and verify the validity of the Charter after 10 years of its creation and in particular in this sanitary emergency, about 30 case studies were collected (UN Habitat, 2013; Garau, Lancerin, Sepe, 2015). The ISMed-CNR research titled "Analysis and design of contemporary territory: identity, health and liveability for resilient and sustainable places" with the author's responsibility is aimed at identifying the factors and elements which make healthy and liveable a place - in the aforementioned 30 Italian case studies, and more in general in the world, - through ad hoc methodologies of urban analysis and design.