An other Florence is possible?

The project Mappa dell'Abbandono a Firenze is bringing me to consider much more my territory, trying to reflect on other parts of the city of Florence and of the Tuscany. Our city is so worldwide well known that nobody tries to do something to revalutate it, but Florence is not just Ponte VECCHIO, Palazzo VECCHIO ( everything is VECCHIO - old - as said Mario at the meeting), therefore it will be good to begin to analyze other areas of the city discovering other really interesting points of view.

Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale. photo: G. Zaganelli

Lungarno dell'Anconella. Bocche dell'acquedotto. photo: G.Zaganelli


..Sorry for this long time without writing a post but recently I have been really busy.
I was in Italy for two conference on the reuse of abandoned and improductive places as resource for the culture and for the art, one in Rome organized c/o Reloadroma by Gianmaria Tosatti and with the special partnership of Gruppo Rosati, who gave their empty space to host two months of exhibitions, performances and meetings, and one in Florence organized by myself with the participation of the Comune di Firenze.
At the Florence meeting have partecipated many persons from differents backgrounds: architects, politics, artists, young students, designers and simple citizens. We understood that the next step is  create a special network of the creative and artistic groups who work on the discover of an other Florence and who try to give a new social/urban image of the city: public art, public performances, urbanistic and maps projects, photography and videos about unknown neighbourhood.
We should[must] reappropriate of our territory and if we don't share our results and contents we cannot obtain our aim.

 Centrale Termica FS. photo: G.Zaganelli

Facoltà di Architettura. photo: G. Zaganelli

Due to Maura, a friend from the university, I discovered two interesting realities that care about of the social and urban context of the city.
The first, Cartografia Resistente, realizes an analisys of the city making derive, new routes with the bicycle discovering the new neighbourhoods of the city and turning around some of the main new architectural icons of the suburbs.
The second interesting project is Spazi Docili (here I link the blog, because their website has to be uploaded). They follow all the architectural and urban dynamics by very close and bring to us a special report on their blogs, often they use also the empty spaces to create their installations.

Palazzo di Giustizia and Parco di San Donato. photo: G.Zaganelli

Inceneritore di San Donnino.  photo: G.Zaganelli

The only way to bring Florence to be again an important center for culture and art in Europe is looking at new and sustainable practices, imaging Florence not inside its real borders but including Prato, Pistoia and all the area of the Piana.
We have to put out our close mentality, we should stop to be always envious of other person, realities or strategies but we must consider every positive approach as a part of our rebirth and to make a network of all of these.
Florence has an enormous potential but, if it does not make use of this, in some decades will be the Disneyland of the Reinassance. Every year Florence looses people, as all the other italian cities but with a higher rate. The city will be completely in hand to the tourism and to the real estate speculation.
Hundreds of apartments will be bought by the emerging rich: chinese, russian, brazilian and indians and the city will remain empty for the most of the year.
Today all the artisan are disappearing because the costs of the life are too high, as well as all the old bookshops and the smallest realities di quartiere.
We have to invert this trend and the only way to do is believe that is absolutely necessary.

 casottino dietro l'ex generatore dei Tram di Varlungo. photo: G.Zaganelli

orti sotto al viadotto dell'Indiano. photo: G.Zaganelli

parco dell'Isolotto. photo: G.Zaganelli

costruzione della scuola dei Carabinieri, Castello. photo: G.Zaganelli


all the photos are the fruit of my constant research on the territory since 2003