EDITORIAL. DIGNITY AND PLANNING: FRAMING THE ISSUE

The Covid-19 pandemic has impacted on the world’s population in unprecedented terms, both with regard to its economic and socio-spatial implications. Social distancing measures and restrictions on the use of public spaces are permanently changing our relationships with urban spaces. Space also represents a crucial dimension in the construction of policies for preventing, managing, and contrasting the spread of the virus. Urban studies have often faced the challenges raised by health emergencies, natural disasters, and traumatic events, seizing the opportunities and need for radical rethinking of spaces and the processes that govern them. in relation to these considerations, the article proposes a reflection about new urban structures capable of dealing with pandemic and post-pandemic contexts, and also to overcome some structural contradictions and injustices that characterize the current urban neoliberal regime: in particular, the need to protect the health of both individuals and communities, the increase in socio-spatial inequalities and the importance of guaranteeing forms of participation in social life.