The 2024 conference of the Italian Society of Urban Planners (SIU) entitled “Novel territorial ecologies. Cohabiting changing worlds” focuses on new territorial ecologies. Urban planning must urgently contribute to defining these ecologies to sustainably and equitably cohabit our changing worlds. This is a matter of utmost importance, emphasized by the plural terms “ecologies” and “worlds,” highlighting the relational, contextual, political, and environmental character required by the radical ecological stance invoked here.

This theme has been central to the debate promoted by the Italian Society of Urban Planners for several years.

Our paper entitled “Italian Borderscapes After 2020: New Transboundary Ecologies in Response to the Global Polycrisis” tackles such issues by presenting some early insights from the project.

The paper contributes to the session “CANTIERI/COSTRUCTION SITES” chaired by Enrico Formato and Anna Attademo and devoted to explore questions such as: What emerging uses can promote the quality and adaptability of living environments, create common ground for human interactions, both human and non-human, and share activities and micro-actions, ensuring just and sustainable strategies? What methodologies and visions can bridge the gap between social components, uses, and ecological transition through engagement and co-design? What new roles can institutions and designers take on, prioritizing initiation and facilitation over authorship?

Which parts of the territory most effectively “territorialize” hybrid uses and co-management practices of spatial resources? From peri-urban fringes to common lands, laboratories that unveil landscapes and anchor practices, to dormant giants, and even what remains of dispersed areas and losing districts within the contraction of consolidated fabrics, marking the divide between the stable and the moving. What other middle territories should we still look at to outline new worlds to co-inhabit?