Eight proposals to construct the democratic city of the new millennium

European Union instructions and the need to make planning processes effective and efficient require that local government take the responsibility for constructing and implementing processes of interaction at all scales, in order to promote participation and meet with consensus in identifying coherent political choices for governing territorial transformations. Faced with shaping supra-local government configurations and with the crisis of the traditional instruments of democracy, novel forms of government of the territory are required, that might favour, on the one hand, the creation of networks of multiple relations between different subjects, territories and cities, guaranteeing everyone’s rights and, on the other, the integration of technical, administrative and political capacities of the institutions with capacities, knowledge, practices and experience rooted in the context. It is a case of a process that entails work on constructing shared points of view and sensitivity and forms of mutual learning, through instruments and procedures for the future organisation of the territory. In Italy it is by starting above all with local administrations that a democratic space may be developed that is steered towards defining urban policies with a long-term perspective and strategic planning of several years’ duration, underway at the various levels of government of the territory (municipal, inter-municipal, provincial…), which will involve all contexts (from small towns to metropolises): a perspective that needs suitable techniques and instruments.