Asilo Filangieri - Naples
Description
GeCo Living Lab:
“The Asilo Filangieri is an historical public building located in the center of the southern Italian city of Naples. It remained empty for quite a long time until, in 2012, a group of citizens decided to occupy it to start a path of participatory governance of the space. Within the space many activities and projects were organized, things which fostered the aggregation of many people around the stewardship of the building. The assembly which undertook the governance of the building (which was – and still is – open to all) built up a democratic process to come up with a “charter” of rules and principles for the management and protection of the estate. On its side, the public owner (the municipality of Naples) realized that the practice carried out in the “Asilo Filangieri” had a positive social impact greater than the municipality could have created itself resorting to traditional public tools and resources. For this reason, the municipality decided to legitimize the process by incorporating the “charter” (“declaration”) written by the community into an administrative act (a deliberation of the city council), this way giving effects to its provisions and legitimizing the possession and the stewardship directly carried out by citizens. The example of Asilo Filangieri introduces another important point. Namely that, most of the times (although not always) generative commons lay in public buildings which could not be differently regenerated due to the lack of resources of public administrations. This phenomenon is very widespread, to the point that certain cities, precisely because of that, have decided to use generative commons as a general strategy for the management and regeneration of public spaces, making them a guideline of local public policies.”
