Public spaces and the COVID-19 pandemic: two best practices in the Mediterranean area

Aim of the paper is to illustrate the main results of a study concerning some of the best practices of public spaces in Italy, starting from the Charter of Public Space which was adopted during the second Biennial of Public Space held in Rome in May 2013, adopted by the Naples Commune in June 2013 and presented at the Quito Habitat 3 Conference, during which many principles were used for the New Urban Agenda discussion concerning quality public spaces. In order to comprehend the relationship between theory and practice and verify the validity of the Charter after 10 years of its creation and, in particular, in this sanitary emergency period, about 30 case studies were collected, of which two in the Mediterranean area will be illustrated, namely Genoa and Palermo waterfronts. To achieve this goal an ad hoc database was created - the QPS-D@ taC + - Quality Public Space D@ta Collection plus - to analyse the cases. Accordingly, the updating of some principles of the Charter conclude the paper. The Charter is composed by 50 principles that are a sort of guidelines for livable and sustainable public spaces. All the principles are related to the achievement of the urban quality: «Public spaces are a key element of individual and social well-being, the places of a community's collective life, expressions of the diversity of their common natural and cultural richness and a foundation of their identity. The community rec- ognizes itself in its public places and pursues the improvement of their spatial quality» (principle 7). Furthermore, as the paper is going to illustrate, the increasing distinctiveness of the Mediterranean territories also observed in the Palermo, Genoa, and the other waterfront cases, made necessary to update the Charter to better focus on the Mediterranean peculiarities.