DIY urbanism as a tool of urban regeneration. Two cases in comparison

A process of urban regeneration should be able to produce social and spatial contextual effects. In order to achieve long-term results, it has to guarantee social inclusion. New rising ways of transformation of public space, consisting in the urban co-design, are defining new tools able to trigger processes of regeneration so called “community-led”. One of the approaches used by different groups of architects to trigger regeneration processes of so-called “in need areas” is the activation of the community through urban laboratories of social innovation for the realization of temporary transformations of space. This article explores the analysis of DIY (Do It Yourself) Urbanism tools of co-planning and co-construction as motors of innovation, activation and social inclusion, investigating their role in urban regeneration. Questions are being asked about the new skills of the architect involved in these procedures and about possible tools useful to the institutions to act in these operative fields. The purpose is to analyze some practices, hypothesizing their replicability and applicability to different scales, in order to generate virtuous mechanisms. Two experiences of co-design and co-construction, located in two different geographic, social and political contexts, will be shown: the construction of the Casa de la lluvia (de ideas), in Bogotà(Colombia), and the regeneration of Piazza Gasparotto, in Padua (Italy). Despite the peculiarities of context, we want to illustrate the strategies implemented in the cases exposed, in order to identify shared features and differences due to the degrees of freedom that the participation tools must have, to be flexible and repeatable.