In the fields of
urban planning,
urban regeneration and
e-government, the term piazza telematica has been used in Italy since the early 1990s by a number of
community network and local institutions for promoting the insertion, inside the urban upgrading processes, of the principles of
sustainable development and of
accessibility for all to
IT tools for assuring the Right of
Citizenship: the possibilities to participate in public decision processes, to access to the knowledge and training, to take part of the social
local community life.
The term piazza telematica evokes a hybrid space indebted in equal parts to the real (with territorial components) and the
virtual space that has to be considered as a whole, a new
glocal (global – local)
public space with a great symbolic value for the
democratic interaction and for the social life.
1990 - The term Piazza Telematica is used for the first time in newspapers and magazines in order to describe the telematics systems and services set up for the journalists in the 12 Italian cities hosting the
FIFA World Cup 1990.
1994 - Participation to the ACT-VILL project of the Direction XII
Science and Technology of the
European Union for the city of the 21st century corresponding to new concepts synthesised in three scenarios:
Sustainable city, a city that internalise the problems it generates, solving them instead of transferring to other or to the future.
"
Glocal" city (global/local), a city with a better balance between the
globalisation process and the ability to use local resources.
Post-modern or
agora city, a human centred city with a harmonic relationship between the
citizen and the
urban design.
1995 - Participation to the European conference Urban utopias: new tools for the
European Urban Renaissance, promoted by the Direction XII
Science and Technology of the
European Union and hosted by the Municipality of
Berlin.
2004 - The first pilot project of a Piazza Telematica, supported by the European Union (div. XVI for social cohesion and sustainable development) is opened to the general public in
Naples (Italy) in the bourough of Scampia.
In some other pilot projects, as is the case for the Piazza Telematica of the Municipality of Provaglio d'Iseo, the term Piazza Telematica is used in order to evoke a virtual space on the Internet open to all citizens for the exchange of ideas, proposals and participation, through
forum and other
web instruments, to the socio-cultural and economic life of the
community.