Facing the global crisis in the city and by the city through European joint research: urban planning and design for local development

City is the place where global crisis effect manifests itself in the hardest mode. At the same time city is the main resource that we have to face the crisis. European situation is different, on the one hand, in rich Countries as Germany and United Kingdom and, on the other hand, in Countries as Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy that are facing socio-economic troubles. But in all these Countries the city is the junction to pass from the crisis towards the economic and socio-cultural restart. Urban research context is becoming more and more complex because the global crisis has had a strong impact also at local level and at the urban scale. We should apply the sustainability motto “thinking global and acting local” to combat against economic, social and environmental crisis. Urban planning and design can help re-development strategies and cities could favour the economic growth through renovation of spaces and functions. Research activities should define approaches and methodologies to develop economy and meantime to contrast social distress and spatial segregation. We must face lost of identity and semantic weakness, we should promote cultural variety and richness. Europe 2020 is the UE strategy for re-launch productivity and society. It has five objective: employment, innovation, education, social inclusion and climate/energy. JPI Urban propose to carry out the strategy through innovation and technology, sustainable mobility, social cohesion and integration, ecological footprint reduction. JPI Urban topics should be integrated by cultural variety as semantic resource for architectural language, urban places identity, urban space and functions recovery, land vocation. The state of the art sometimes reveals an attitude of ideological foreclosure toward the economic dimension of sustainability. Especially in Italy, there is a strong focus on environmental and social factors and a partial detachment of architectural and planning research toward the more strictly economic factors. It isn’t pursued the balanced application of the sustainability principles in three dimensions: environmental, social and economic. Loss of identity in urban spaces, impoverishment of architectural language, semantic loss of urban spaces, social and cultural exclusion, spatial segregation are the problems to be solved. The innovative methods should answer to the demand of city and architecture that urban communities pose, in the current global crisis. The phases are analysis, interpretation, decision support and proposals for action. In this perspective, the role of all stakeholders and actors in the area acquires special importance. In conclusion research should define new possible intervention strategies for adapting the urban spaces and functions to the new scenario and new requirements, to enhance competitiveness.