Kiri Kiri Social Network System (Korea, Seoul)
Plug-in The city at your disposal (Milan, Italy)
Windows Community An interface of informationexcange in a building (Paris, France)
Building regisseur Mutual help between families (Naples, Italy)
The elective community The elective community is a local network of people who help each other in solving certain problems and/or who interact together on subjects of common interest
The urban social fabric3 is a social resource that is getting more and more difficult to reproduce in present day cities. The causes of the current crisis are diverse and complex, but they all boil down to the progressive individualisation of society, which has reached extreme levels in mature industrial societies and has, in effect, interrupted the spontaneous processes that create a neighbourhood community. Daily life has always been largely based on people in the same neighbourhood helping each other. Whatever the nature of these communities, they have always formed local, cooperationoriented networks, able to support their individual members through most of life’s events. These collaborative networks, which were traditionally the fruit of slow, self generating, social processes are now considerably weakened and no longer tend to reproduce, or at least tend not to do so as they did in the past. The joint virtualisation of relationships, flexibilisation of life styles and desynchronisation of daily routines has inhibited the regeneration of those conditions of proximity, stability and continuity in relationships that were at the base of any traditional idea of community. This has been causing serious repercussions in people’s lives, particularly in their everyday life and the quality of their living contexts.
Proposal » Facilitate people’s lives by enabling them to face, and resolve, a range of problems on as lo-
3 Urban social fabric the system of relationships that binds people in a community together. It is distinguished by its spatial conformation, its duration and its depth, in relation to a the variety of issues it is based on.
cal a level as possible, through existing community competence and infrastructure, with the combined use of different kinds of economy (market economy, barter and gift economy). » Utilise new technology and organisational systems to generate neighbourhood networks able to provide the required support every time it proves necessary, but with the flexibility and reversibility that contemporary city life seems to call for.
Characteristics The social value of the elective community is evident: by giving more importance to local competence, skills and abilities, it favours the regeneration of people’s living contexts, both for the individual and the community. However, it also presents interesting characteristics from an 81 ı SUSTAINABLE EVERYDAY