#BCM2020: a life-sized city thanks to the culture

Friday, November 13th, throughout the 2020 Milan BookCity event, the Fondazione Collegio delle Università Milanesi promoted an interesting event that was for the occasion represented by Salvatore Carrubba. The theme of the event was “The City in 15 minutes,” or a new way to conceive the city and the proximities between people thanks to a renewed attention to culture.

Among the presenters were Luca Formenton, president of Bookcity, Giovanna Amadasi, Giovanni Crupi, Marco Minoja e Marco Zapparoli. To moderate the event was Aura Bertoni, Professor of Bocconi University.

Professor Bertoni explained that the concept of the “City in 15 minutes” follows a series of ecological, social and economic reasons and of which Covid has highlighted the importance, with many people who today “work from home or near home, spend their free time in their own neighborhood, or shop at the nearby stores”.

An idea, Salvatore Carrubba adds, where the digital realm can be a major help as long as it “does not encourage the self-referentiality of ideas and isolate people.” Because culture, Carrubba underlines again, is a “social activity.”

The “City in 15 minutes” is an idea that may seem impractical in a metropolis as big as Milan, however there are many examples that show the opposite. As a matter of fact, Luca Formenton maintains that: “An example is the reconstruction of Chelsea Market in New York, that transformed an industrial archeological relic into a place full of life and activity, calling many retail vendors back from New Jersey who had moved there due to the high rent prices of Manhattan, and who returned to a reconstructed place with rent-control from the city administrators. It is the exact opposite for the major shopping malls often built in places where depersonalization is essential”.

Although the concept is only at the beginning of its course, it already has a clear objective: to change the conception of the city through culture. All the pre-requisites to do this are present.