Design for urban regeneration: future scenarios and common challenges in a multispecies world for synergistic action-research between design and anthropology

Design and anthropology represent two intertwined disciplines, which historically have found fruitful opportunities for comparison and elements of contact; in the light of the social changes that are strongly influencing also the design field, today more than ever these two disciplines are called to question themselves again, with a critical future-oriented approach, to renew their fields of investigation by enhancing each other's interferences, strategies of collaboration and possible common challenges. In particular, the paper aims to adopt a projective perspective, investigating the present as a time open to the future, a moving “edge”. In fact, more and more frequently we wonder what the perspective is for "the anthropology of the future" (Bryant and Knight, 2019), taking a position similar to those design-oriented approaches promoting “the uncertain and the possibility” (Akama et al., 2018) as well as “fragilisms” as vectors of innovation. The analysis will focus on the role of public anthropology as a privileged interlocutor to those engaged in design; on the enhancement of suburbs as a territory of “residual authenticity” and creative “indiscipline” (Vattimo 1988, p. XI); on the centrality of a micro approach to urban regeneration, as well as on the examples of widespread and inclusive regeneration that see the inhabitants as co-authors, where individuals are not mere bearers of culture and values, but also creators of new culture and projects. The goal is to outline a synergy that looks to the future of action-research on the peripheries starting from the margins, diversities, hybrids, creativity and the informal. Furthermore, we will analyze the prospects of urban regeneration in a post-anthropocentric era. The paper, starting from some recent case studies that mainly involved the Milan area, thus intends to underline and enhance the disciplinary links between anthropology and design, but also their “exchanges, entanglements and frictions” (Bargna and Santanera, 2020), and, in a proactive perspective still to be validated, some possible opportunities of implementation - of tools, practices, policies - for a renewed dialogue between these two disciplines.