Abi(li)tare i territori costruendo ‘conoscenza di luogo’

In recent years, ‘place knowledge’ has assumed centrality both in practice and in the theoretical debate of urban and territorial sciences. Moving beyond a strictly competitive view of positioning, indifferent to places and aimed at the production of standardised spaces, there has been a return to recognising the specificity of contexts in the conviction that the knowledge that sustains innovation (as well as development), as argued by CARROSIO ET AL. (2022, p. 3), ‘resides in places, it is dispersed among the people who live there’. However, this change cannot be assumed uncritically without questioning the nature of the knowledge brought into action in plans and policies; how this knowledge is constructed; and what role the different actors involved play in the process of constructing it. If knowledge ‘in’ and ‘for’ planning presents various epistemological challenges, no less relevant are the implications where this category is associated with the term ‘place’ reinterpreted in its alterity with respect to the concept of ‘space’. Starting from this conceptual framework, the present article questions the following knowledge issues: what forms of ‘place knowledge’ are expressed and considered in the most recent place-based practices? How, and in which ways, does the use of place-based knowledge influence action? And again, in what ways can this knowledge for action contribute to the activation of forms of empowerment and community development?