History of Spaces as a Pivotal Tool for Planning Practice: Analyzing Fractures and Continuities with Schoolchildren for the Master Plan of Dicomano, Italy

Abstract

On the occasion of the drawing up of the new Master Plan for the Municipality of Dicomano (Tuscany), the authorities requested not just a project from the planners, but the initiation of a process that ‘could create and develop a dialogue between inhabitants and institutions’. The dialogical planning included a one-year Laboratory with schools (for children between 8 and 11 years), which involved young generations in the discussion of urban values, sense of belonging and transformation of spaces. The idea was that of valorizing children’s knowledge on city space, and their role of “multipliers” for involving their families in the planning process. A specialized team of architects and planners followed the experience, seeking to avoid the “marginalization” of results and guaranteeing their confluence into the “adults’ plan”. Being Dicomano a city destroyed twice during the XX century (by an earthquake in 1919 and the IIWW in 1944), the first idea was to rebuild the history of spaces, creating a dialogue between new and old generations. The Children Plan proposal played as a catalyst for other citizens, which then were involved in the participatory process which shaped the Structural Plan. The paper analyses some features, limits and results of this experience.