Peripheries at the Center: Architectural Failures, Identity Places and Empowerment in the Liminal Spaces in the City of Genoa

Abstract

Far from being simple expansion areas in interdependent relationship with the city centers or urban fabrics dotted with those that, according to the worn-out definition by Marc Augé, we call “non-places”, urban peripheries are today at the center of a multidisciplinary debate, which mainly aims to deconstruct their imaginary and to elaborate for them new possible representations.
Genoa - a polycentric city because of its orographic structure and of its recent historical de-velopment, a city that can rationally be defined “a city of peripheries” as well as “a city with-out peripheries” - occupies a prominent place in this debate: in its historic center coexist administrative districts and terrain vagues, gentrification areas and ethoscapes; outside of it, the many suburbs stubbornly preserve their identity as small urban areas with their own center and their own peripheries. The peripheries in Genoa create a complex scenario, in which a reductio ad unum center and their own peripheries. The peripheries in Genoa create a complex scenario, in which a reductio ad unum is impossible: they require the use of the plural name even if they might appear quite similar to each other from a urban and architectural point of view, with the dominant architectural model of the LeCorbusian “machine for living in”, whose uncriti-cal repetition has let to one of the most dramatic failures in the history of modern architecture.