Thoughts

Not all form of community engagement can be planned or anticipated. Some, perhaps, derive their most distinctive qualities precisely from the fact that they cannot be planned or anticipated. This observation is not intended to be universally true: rather, it has gradually emerged through ten years of experimentation with Generative Habitat.

Certain types of community engagement arise procedurally only when subjects enter into concrete relationships through shared action, through operational practice. In other words, through doing. Others appear as dynamics of unexpected appropriation and/or as appropriation waiting for a space in which to take shape. Still others take shape in ambiguous, lateral, and difficult-to-categorise ways. What these forms share is that they unfold within a relational and processual dimension that develops organically, so to speak, through individuals’ behavioural pats. Interactions among subjects, within which practices of engagement first take hold and then evolved procedurally adjustments. Adapting to the very trajectories they help generate through reciprocal causation. Relationship may be fostered: solidarity, cooperation, rivalry, conflict, dispute, claims-making, and forms of (re)appropriation that, under favorable conditions, may ultimately develop into place attachment1. These effects are rarely linear, immediate, or univocal. Rather, they unfold over time through interconnected and constantly shifting phases. What emerges is a situated and continuous relational process that moves beyond the episodic nature of individual events, following instead an evolutionary dynamic capable of perturbing a community’s initial conditions of equilibrium.

Avery Kolers would describe this phenomenon as a relational co-evolution between human agents, community and territory2. It reflects the way geographical space and social relations reciprocally co-determine one another, giving rise to what he defines, at the territorial scale, as “ethno-geographies”. Within this morphogenetic causal relationship, the material transformation of space is not a final outcome but an initial cause. The intervention does not produce a single result; rather, it triggers a chain of responses. Effects that emerge in one phase, such as conflict, may become the conditions for subsequent phases, such as cooperation or social cohesion, generating emergent properties and opportunities that could not have been anticipated at the outset of the transformative process.

Within the operational practices of Generative Habitat, we understand engagement not as a preliminary stage of the project, but as an emergent condition and as an integral component of transformation itself. This point is important and calls for particular attention.

Beyond the forms commonly adopted to engage communities in transformative practices, what continues to fuel a growing debate is the centrality of engagement, a term that has become almost ubiquitous. This holds true, in principle, whether the practice is temporary, adaptive, incremental, transitional, or transitory. Engagement appears in urban regeneration programmes, public calls, participatory processes, administrative protocols, and social innovation initiatives promoted by both formal and informal associations. This is neither inherently positive nor inherently negative. It does, however, invite reflection. Over time, the term has acquired different meanings for those who have sought to apply it operationally. Often these meanings stem from a shared desire to ensure that heterogeneous subjects appear genuinely included within decision-making processes and spatial transformation practices, thereby allowing such processes to be labelled as “shared”. The motivations behind this position are multiple. They range from the pursuit of consensus and the aspiration to mitigate conflict, to the more pragmatic need to secure acceptance of a proposed intervention by the community that inhabits and uses the space.

Rather than distancing ourselves from these trajectories, we gradually began orienting ourselves within them. For this reason, we deliberately chose not to adopt a rigid or prescriptive theoretical position. Instead, we progressively developing a highly operational and pedagogical stance capable of engaging with heterogeneous conditions, shifting temporalities, and constantly changing interlocutors. We were seeking a theoretical compass to help us answer a deceptively simple question: who are we really building for?

Orienting

Among other things, Generative Habitat is conceived as a platform through which the pedagogical dimension of Unica Space Force converges with the ambition of opening up new possibilities for using space. Its dual character inevitably operates within a dense and complex relational framework shaped by interests, desires, expectations of uses, conflicts, and temporalities that rarely coincide.

A significant part of the debate that has developed over recent decades around how actions such as those presented in this volume engage with human behaviour, particularly within the field of sustainable planning and design3. This debate has been profoundly influenced by collaborative planning approaches, particularly through their redefinition of the relationship between projects, institutions, and society.

Experiences of partnership and collaboration, following the line of thought developed by Patsy Healey4, progressively shifted attention away from rationalist models towards forms of planning centred on dialogue, cooperation, and the shared construction of decisions. All of this is embedded in a logic aimed at conceiving, implementing, and managing projects and public works of public interest that, through the mediating role of the public sector, generate mutual benefits for communities while also creating value for the private sector5. At the same time, a growing body of scholarship has highlighted the limits of an exclusively procedural understanding of collaboration. Drawing on traditions associated with Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Carl Schmitt, several authors have argued that collaborative processes cannot be reduced to the shared production of consensus. Rather, the possibility of articulating conflict must be recognised as a constitutive dimension of collective life a constitutive dimension of collective life collective life6. From this perspective, Generative Habitat introduce a particularly interesting condition. Any intervention capable of improving and reactivating a space also makes that space more desirable. Under conditions of scarcity – particularly where public space is concerned – the convergence of multiple desires inevitably generates tensions, competing forms of appropriation, and new patterns of use that often materialise as occasions for conflict. Spaces that were previously marginal or neglected suddenly become contestable precisely because they have been reactivated. This may help explain why a number of informal – and at times radical – practices associated with what some authors have termed “insurgent planning” have progressively gained relevance within contemporary debates . Not because of their ability to eliminate conflict, but because of their capacity to make it visible through transformative action. More specifically, such approaches emphasise the importance of including people without reducing participation to an obsessive pursuit of distributive equity. Instead, they draw attention to the distance between formally “invited” spaces of participation and those forms of appropriation and activation that emerge autonomously and in situated ways7. Practices associated with “tactical urbanism” can be read within this second category, particularly when understood as a means of testing relational processes in space in anticipation of more permanent interventions8. The objective is no longer simply “to ask people what they want” and subsequently manipulate space accordingly. Rather, it is to intervene while asking. To introduce a deliberate perturbation capable of “nudging”9 space towards new uses, intentions, and appropriative impulses, while simultaneously observing how these dynamics unfold. Such interventions can also reveal the emergence of leadership within a community. They become vehicles through which visions circulate and spread, gradually maturing into shared forms of stewardship and care for places.

Yet while retaining the principles of prototyping and the performative use of space embodied in self-built architectures, it is the notion of insurgent planning10 that allows us to make sense of these “uninvited” forms of appropriation . In other words, engagement may also take shape through contestatory practices, emerging precisely from the perturbation of an existing equilibrium11. It requires acknowledging that transformative practices may be perceived by certain groups as opportunities to oppose the very “invitation” through which participation is formally offered. In this sense, spaces may emerge through acts of “claim-making”12 and contestation, as the outcome of processes that contribute to defining the cultural meaning of public space13.

At the same time, if engagement is understood in the terms proposed here, it becomes evident that doing through self-built architectures significantly accelerates relationships that would otherwise evolve more slowly. It creates temporary spaces of collaboration and experimentation in which a wide range of emotions, tensions, and aspirations inevitably emerge among those who participate, often reawakening dispositions that had remained dormant until that moment. This is not necessarily a negative condition. On the contrary, it has led us to reflect more closely on the behavioural dimension of human action. From this perspective, one of the questions that has most profoundly shaped our understanding of engagement concerns the “géométries du désir” that unfold within collaborative processes14. More specifically, it involves learning to recognise that the communities involved do not always know how to define or articulate what they genuinely desire – at least not immediately. René Girard’s theory of “mimetic desire” offers a particularly useful lens through which to reconsider this assumption. By drawing attention to the fundamentally mimetic nature of desire, Girard challenges the idea that individuals possess transparent access to their own aspirations from the outset. In a different but complementary way, Robert Bellah15, reflecting on the moral tensions of modernity between individual self-realisation and the need for belonging, provides an equally valuable framework for understanding how the aspirations, intuitions, and expectations of both individuals and groups are not always immediately available to consciousness – even when they concern the transformation of the spaces they inhabit.

The conception of space underlying the idea of Generative Habitat carries the transformative action itself as a deliberate effort to create the conditions through which bodies, skills, desires, vulnerabilities, and imaginaries may enter into relation. In this sense, engagement can be understood as a transformative condition capable of simultaneously modifying space, subjects, and the relationships that bind them. This orientation draws strong methodological inspiration from grounded theory16, insofar as it allows interpretations of social dynamics to emerge from empirical experience and direct observation rather than from the verification of hypotheses established in advance. In this regard, it can be understood as an abductive approach through which unexpected configurations are progressively interpreted through an ongoing dialogue between empirical observation and theory.

Revealing

Within these practices, structured around the temporal rhythms of self-building, engagement does not occur through forms of participation that are transparent, rational, or fully conscious. Rather, it unfolds through interactions in which participants progressively discover desires, conflicts, relationships, and meanings that they are initially unable to fully recognise. In these terms, we might say that engagement acquires a deeply situated dimension when it operates within a condition of agnosis already informed by social relations. This point deserves further clarification.

Over the years, our experiences have often taken place in contexts characterised by what might be described as an «initial disorder»18. Yet this apparent chaos is anything but random. Beneath it lies a structured behavioural matrix: a latent code governing proximities, tensions, and possibilities of relation. Participants who decide to engage with the construction site during the making of the architectures often believe they are acting autonomously or spontaneously. In reality, they find themselves in a condition of agnosis. They do not fully know what they are doing. They believe they understand it, but they do not. What remains invisible to them is that their actions are already profoundly “informed” by the géométries du désir. From this perspective, Girard’s theory of “mimetic desire” provides a particularly valuable interpretative lens. As noted earlier, the construction site of a Generative Habitat facilitates networks of dialogue, creating opportunities for disagreement, sudden affinities, and unexpected alliances. At times, it also brings forth spontaneous forms of leadership that may result in the exclusion of certain participants. This is not accidental. Participants are “informed” by dynamics of imitation, envy, and neighbourhood rivalries that, often without their awareness, give shape to an order structured by hidden social rules. Within this framework, not everything that emerges during the transformative process is fully predictable, nameable, or immediately available to consciousness. Certain desires, relationships, and possibilities of use arise precisely through the shared experience of building together. Generative Habitat thus introduces a form of practical and relational knowledge that does not merely represent pre-existing needs. Rather, it contributes to the emergence of new forms of awareness, new dispositions, and new ways of inhabiting space. Being together on the construction site involves a form of reciprocal exposure that is difficult to reproduce in other contexts. It means sharing time, uncertainty, and continuous adaptation. It means confronting the unexpected within a limited timeframe. Negotiating solutions in real time becomes inevitable, as does dealing with the material constraints imposed by reality itself. From this perspective, the construction site ceases to be merely the place where an artefact is technically realised and becomes instead an intensive relational space: “a space adapted to change, capable of accommodating the transformations of everyday life”19. Agnosis is thus progressively “re-informed”, orienting participants towards forms of cooperation and solidarity that may gradually create favourable conditions for the “production of (social) space”20.

Building

Students, residents, researchers, technicians, lecturers, children, associations, craftspeople, and local administrations together constitute what we are now able to recognise for what it is: a relational device. A heterogeneous assemblage of social actors who, by temporarily sharing the same operational space, generate unexpected forms of proximity, redefining established roles and creating new forms of complicity among individuals often separated by age, opinions, expertise, backgrounds, and social conditions. This condition facilitates encounters between what might be called ‘common’ knowledge, ‘specialised’ knowledge, and ‘political’ knowledge within processes of urban transformation, while also drawing into the process actors who were initially external to it. It is through the shared use of tools that new stimuli emerge, together with new ways of imagining space.

In this sense, self-building practices are not concerned solely with delivering a completed physical artefact. They become genuine tools precisely insofar as they take the form of temporary, lightweight, reversible, and adaptive interventions capable of passing through a place while leaving lasting traces on behaviour and in the ways space is perceived, traversed, and inhabited. It is here that transformative intent translates into the possibility of activating latent conditions. The construction site becomes a space in which practices of appropriation, reuse, and claim-making can gradually emerge, consolidating over time well beyond the material lifespan of the intervention itself. This is because the transformed space does not coincide solely with the physical object produced and returned to the community. What matters is what persists, what remains: the social practices of use that continue to traverse transformed spaces.

The value of the intervention therefore resides in the processes and practices it enables over time. It fosters responsibility and awareness, including among informal groups. A first step towards initiatives and other “insurgent” practices capable of contributing to the conditions for genuine regeneration. It is in this way that engagement becomes a form of practical and relational knowledge, contributing to the emergence of new forms of awareness, new dispositions, and new ways of inhabiting space. Here, inhabiting is understood in its Heideggerian sense: a condition in which building is itself a form of “dwelling”, and where “the fundamental character of dwelling is caring”21. “Building” means creating the conditions through which something may continue to happen long after the construction site has come to an end. Perhaps this is why, today, in Ortueri, a young girl calls out her mother after seeing her throw a cigarette packet onto the ground. And perhaps it is also why, in the social fragile neighbourhood of Is Mirrionis, a place often narrated through the lens of prejudice, not a single stool – the “cubotto” – has disappeared more than a year after the intervention. Small signs, perhaps. Minor traces. Yet these traces help reveal the true measure of a practice capable of establishing collective exercises of care for places.

Opening Up

Engagement also involves opening oneself to others and to the uncertainties of the process. It means accepting that spatial transformation emerges progressively through doing, rather than from a fully defined hypothesis established in advance. But there is more to it. It means becoming open to the unexpected, to risk, to error, to delays in the making of an artefact. It means accepting the simultaneous presence of multiple groups of people within the same operational space. It means embracing the possibility of a scenario in which control is partially relinquished. It means acknowledging that children, elderly residents, craftspeople, and institutional representatives may enter a construction site that deliberately chooses to remain open. From this perspective, the practice entails a form of operational vulnerability rarely found in conventional design processes. Yet it is precisely this condition that makes possible forms of proximity that are difficult to achieve through exclusively discursive means. Public meetings, assemblies, participatory workshops, and consultations are often important devices, but they tend to preserve relatively stable roles among those involved. Those who design continue to design. Those who observe continue to observe. Those who inhabit continue, for the most part, to narrate.

Generative Habitat introduces a different condition. The presence of bodies, materials, operational time, and the unexpected produces a continuous displacement of positions. Competences are redistributed, while hierarchies become temporarily unstable. Error becomes an integral part of the process. A condition that contributes to the definition of a temporary infrastructure capable of generating opportunities for reciprocal learning through a cooperation that endures throughout the transformative process. An operation that opens the construction site to residents and other interested actors, while also offering students the possibility of engaging directly with situated practices of relationship-building, negotiation, and the shared construction of space. What ultimately emerges does not coincide with the linear application of a predefined design. Rather, it consists of the relationships generated during the process itself: temporary networks of collaboration, new forms of trust, unexpected appropriations of space, or simply the possibility for different subjects to recognise themselves, however briefly, within a shared experience.

Opening oneself does not concern only the physical boundaries of the construction site. It creates conditions through which places, relationships, and ways of inhabiting progressively redefine one another.

From this perspective, the notion of “ethnogeographies” introduced earlier in the chapter helps illuminate the ways in which groups of individuals, social relations, and geographical space co-determine one another, gradually shaping each other over time. Within this framework, exposing oneself does not simply mean increasing the number of participants involved in a process. Rather, it means creating the conditions through which different subjects may be transformed through a shared experience. Collaborative processes transform not only spaces and the individuals formally targeted by an intervention, but also those who design, coordinate, and research them. Perhaps it is precisely in this dimension that Generative Habitat retains its most “insurgent” character. Not in the production of temporary artefacts, nor in the romantic rhetoric of collective making, but in their capacity to generate spaces in which relationships, roles, and imaginaries may be temporarily redefined. At a time when engagement increasingly risks being reduced to procedure, communication, or consensus, building together continues, above all, to mean sharing a transformation.

It is in this way that engagement progressively becomes embedded within self-building practices, taking on an operational posture capable of activating latent possibilities. It acts through a series of gradual and procedural stages by which groups of people and spaces shape one another, producing over time a profound sense of belonging and place identity. From this perspective, the concept of “plenitude”22 helps clarify how place attachment is not necessarily intensified by an increase in material resources, but rather by the progressive deepening of knowledge, care, and practices of use that sediment over time. It is in this way that the effects of transformative practice reveal their evolutionary character. For this reason, the concept of Generative Habitat does not treat engagement as a phase separate from design, nor as a preliminary consultative device. Instead, it understands engagement as a necessary condition accompanying the entire transformative process. Engagement moves together with doing. It traverses the construction site, intercepting the relationships and forms of appropriation that emerge through the act of building.