Contemporary cities today appear to be at the center of great processes of global economic, social and political transformation. This, on the one hand, certainly generates new problems and new challenges at the urban level, especially in relation to the different forms of inequality, social exclusion and poverty that seem to be increasingly intensifying and radicalising. It is in this sense that it becomes possible to speak of the configuration of a real "unequal city" that at the same time attracts and rejects, includes and excludes, rewards and punishes. On the other hand, however, this opens up unprecedented possibilities for rethinking the urban paradigm through a more sustainable and inclusive perspective. Milan is a paradigmatic case in this sense.

Within such an urban configuration, how can the "right to community" and at the same time the "duty to participate" be made substantial, as stated in the Universal Declaration, according to the possibility and choice, adds the Italian Constitution?

To answer these questions, the research project turns its attention to the dynamics of "making community", the latter understood not so much in a static and reified sense, but rather in a dynamic and processual sense, as a concrete "emergent effect" of a plurality of practices of proximity, sharing and care. In fact, the concept of "community" is characterized by a definition that is certainly not unambiguous and in many cases ambivalent, which often risks slipping towards the extreme poles of withdrawal and exclusion or of libertarian and nomadic dissolution. And it is also for this reason that, on a theoretical level, it is decisive to focus on "making community" as a specific logic of action, rather than on "community" as an idealtype to which it corresponds.

In light of this scenario, the research project aims to focus attention on the multiple forms and practices of proximity welfare and, more generally, of "community building" present at the urban level. These can be understood as an emergent effect of a plurality of practices of proximity, sharing and care, formal and informal, from above and below. Numerous welfare practices are developed thanks to the services and organized interventions of territorial welfare, increasingly oriented to operate according to the co-production approach and therefore thanks to the professionals who build the response to needs together with the beneficiaries (the "visible city", in Michel de Certeau's terms). Many other practices, however, are born and developed "from the bottom", through diversified forms of aggregation and reweaving of proximity ties within which a plurality of actors – outside formal professional roles – are activators and protagonists of experiences that reconstruct proximity and participation (the "invisible city").  

The general objective of the research project is, therefore, to investigate through a plurality of methodologies and disciplinary perspectives the different forms and practices of welfare and proximity present at the urban level, in order to show if and how these allow to activate processes of community regeneration, as well as inclusion and participation, as well as to trace if and how bridges can be built between the visible city and the invisible city. 

1. • Objectives (/project/objectives)
2. Definition of the theoretical, epistemological and methodological foundations for the analysis of community generation processes (key concepts: right to community, participation, proximity, care).  

1. Advancement of knowledge of the structural and processual dimensions (inequality, vulnerability and urban poverty; administrative regulation...) that affect the conditions of participation and the possibilities of contribution to the construction of communities in the metropolitan context.  

1. Advancement of knowledge on the relationship between "visible city" and "invisible city" using as a field of observation a portion of territory explored ethnographically to understand protagonists, mechanisms, possibilities of connection between formal and informal, institutional responses and responses of citizenship, instituting dimension and established dimension.

This is also by focusing attention on social work professionals and on what we can call "informal community agents", collecting their professional and life stories, studying their daily practices of work and social action. The aim is to understand if and how they contribute to the construction of forms of proximity welfare and inclusion at the urban level capable of linking together formal and informal responses with those that arise from citizenship, the instituting and the instituted dimension. 

1. Policy indications in connection with the various research stakeholders (policy makers, representatives of civil society; proximity welfare operators, universities...). In particular, the project aims to learn from the practices analyzed at the urban level and from the stories of professionals engaged in the different forms of proximity welfare.

From a methodological point of view, the project involves the use of an integrated multiplicity of disciplinary approaches and research methods, according to a multi-method approach (and in some WP mixed-method). Different research techniques – qualitative and quantitative – will in fact be used in order to work in synergy to serve the different survey objectives (surveys, case studies, biographical interviews, analysis of practices, etc.).