Vol. 14 No. 18 (2023): Cities and Territories of Democracy

The connection between the forms of power exercise and those of space must be under continuous observation. In a co-evolutionary ecosystem, where local societies transform (and transform themselves with) the environments in which they live, a perturbation in the ways of living and producing eventually also perturbs forms of governance, and vice versa. In this process of becoming and con-being, the condition for safeguarding democracy is the protection of what we define here as democratic cities and territories, of which we have collectively attempted to circumscribe the meaning, character and limits. Whether they are real or utopian expressions, an observation or a desire; whether there are models for implementing them; whether there are parameters that identify their democratic nature; whether an aesthetic characterises them: we attempt to answer these questions in this issue of the journal in_bo edited by Ilaria Agostini, Luigi Bartolomei and Elena Franco.