La crisi della città e l'impatto dell'epidemia di Covid-19

The outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic in early 2020 marked the beginning of an in-depth reflection on the potential implications of the event. This attention has affected, first, the medical-health sector, but has also affected other scientific sectors, with analyses focused on the scenarios resulting from the global shock caused by the epidemic. The urban planning sector also was involved. The period of the lockdown, ironically told by images testifying the sudden emptying of cities, resulted for urban planners as the opportunity to deepen the analysis on urban systems. The cities, characterized by the presence of activities, relationships, and information, have turned into a threat helped by one of their distinctive properties, the concentration, which has backfired against people favouring the transmission of the virus. The attention of scholars has focused above all on identifying potential answers in the urban and territorial field; In addiction it led to think in depth on the distorted set-up assumed over time by the city, and on the actions necessary to modify them, to improve their overall quality and to avoid that it could turn back into a hostile space. The paper analyses a set of articles published in the first year of the epidemic and develops an organized reading of the main themes addressed in the discussions on the relationship between city and epidemic event, connecting them to a more extensive reasoning on the critical state of Italian urban systems and their environmental and social load.