Public spaces in the making from the perspective of urban anthropology. Public spaces of Milan in contemporary era

Nowadays, with the intensification of urbanization, many cities have being through urban transformations. A large number of urban design projects have mushroomed, not only in the emerging cities of developing countries, but also in the historical cities of developed countries such as Milan. Interestingly, urban design projects that followed the expertise of city planners and architects, who have professionally trained, seem fail to impress citizens. After nearly all styles and genres have experienced the post generation of development and change, it is difficult to judge exactly what is the beauty. There is no uniform standard. Therefore, as a city planner or architect, the master key for urban design projects is not the physical forms of space, but some other factors. Sophisticated experience and lessons are shared among cities worldwide. Indeed, mankind could import and benefit from their common wisdom, such as advanced machines, techniques, management methods, even national mechanism. However, there is one thing that cannot be imported, the custom. It cannot be imported because it is something that marks in people’s DNA. The way they think, act and live does not change that easily or rapidly throughout time. It affects how the local use their own places, in anther term, their public life. The notion “non-places” by Marc Auge 20 years ago is already a prefiguration of excessive-globalization scenario. The coupling potentiality of urban design and urban anthropology lies in human's social attributes. Urban public spaces are the containers of people’s public life that differs from place to place due to various customs. The research takes its theoretical inspiration from the Actor-network Theory which is an approach that oriented in sociology with the work of Bruno Latour and Michael Serres, and ethnography as methodology to capture the complex and shifting urban environment, attempting to discover a strategy for urban design projects during urban transformation in contemporary era, towards a resilience city