Background: the Therapeutic Illusion of Space

The “therapeutic illusion of space”, which traditionally characterised the urban planning discipline, can be considered to correspond to the formula according to which “the improvement of the urbs determines improvement of the civitas”, a formula that in a certain sense subordinates actions on the second to actions on the first. But the urbs has deteriorated, perhaps precisely because of this subordinate role the urban planners have attributed to the civitas, tipping the balance towards the urbs and ultimately favouring the progressive loss of their mutual relations. In this hetero-directed role (which is also the “control command” heritage of the synoptic rationality of rational-comprehensive urbanistics) the civitas no longer has active relations with the urbs, and therefore not only receives no positive effects from it, but it suffers undesirable ones; at the same time it also worsens as civitas itself, becoming passive, fragmented and crystallised.