I am Associate Professor at Dastu-Politecnico di Milano, where I teach Urban Planning and Urban Ethnography. Since 2002 I have been working at Polimi, at IUAV Venice, at the Bartlett School of Planning at University College London, and at SciencesPo, Centre d’études européennes et de politique comparée in Paris.
I work on planning tools and urban policy in multi-ethnic contexts. On these issues, I have developed comparative works on different cities, especially in Italy, in the United Kingdom and in France. My work has been characterised by an attention to the different scales of intervention of planning, coupled with case studies entering into the ‘fine-grain’ of neighbourhoods and places, also through ethnographical approaches.
From 2012 to 2014 I have been Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Bartlett School of Planning where I developed the project: Contested Mix. Towards a reframing of spatial policies in multi-ethnic environments. The project resulted in an in-depth critique of the uses of the concept of diversity in city planning, as well as in ethnographic work within multicultural groups opposing social mixing policies and related transformation in some areas of North-East London. The work with these groups led to increasing attention to everyday multiculturalism and related debates on the relevance of micro-publics of encounter.
This is the background of a still-in-progress reflection on how planners and policy-makers can take stock of experiences of coexistence in the everyday life of very different populations (immigrants and natives), to build up plans and policies that should be able to distinguish between just and unjust diversity, as well as the intertwining between diversities and inequalities that affect people lives, included not-immigrants.
I have worked also on the evolution of urban policy in different European contexts, reflecting on the logic of area-based initiatives, the convergences and divergences with EU urban policy as well as the more recent process of financialisation.
I have been working on the specificities of ethnographical approaches practiced by planners and designers, and I have coordinated the project Ethno-graphs. The (textual, graphical, photographic) transcription of field observation as a specific practice of Architectural Ethnography. These methodological reflections are feeding a new way of looking at the spatial peculiarities of micro-publics of encounter, but without forgetting the role played by broader plans.
My research has been widely presented at International seminars and conferences, and published in 11 authored books and peer-reviewed journals. In 2018 I received with Massimo Bricocoli and Martina Bovo the AESOP Best Conference Paper Award for the paper: ‘Diversity on board. The 90/91 trolley-bus in Milan as a cosmopolitan canopy’, published in 2022 in Urban Studies.
I am editor of the SCOPUS Journal Territorio, and member of the Scientific Committee of the SCOPUS Journal Ciudad y Territorio. Estudios Territoriales (Politécnica de Madrid).