A City for All

“Beauty will save the world” wrote Fëdor Dostoevskij in his famous book The Idiot. Beauty is something that can be parsed in a thousand ways, and if Dostoevsky was talking about a doctrine of beauty, the "experience of beauty”, I like to think - to paraphrase Giorgio Gaber - that very often, beauty “is participation”. I believe that concepts like participation in and the experience of beauty are fundamental elements of a society which aims to be inclusive, of a city which wants to be "for all’. They are fundamental because first of all, art and culture have the power to eliminate barriers, to unite people and different social classes; culture is an integral part of a city because it tells of centuries of history, customs and families, and so this is why it is also extraordinarily important in a process of enrichment and growth in the awareness of its citizens. Awareness is the third fundamental concept for a city that wants to be "for all", because it must be aware of what it is and what surrounds it, the context and the territory in which each of us lives; it is the track along which “the splendour of truth” moves, to use a concept dear to Plato. The city is "for all" if it recognises, acts and develops in equal measure, not only the traditional functions (economic, social, political and services), but also an educational function, in the sense that it assumes an intention and a responsibility towards the formation, the promotion and the development of every single one of its inhabitants, starting with its children and young people.

The reasons which give legitimacy to this new function must be sought in motives of social, economic and political order, but also in cultural and pedagogical motives. So this is the great challenge; the “investment” must be in education, in people, in every single citizen, so that all individuals can better express-affirm-develop their human potential, made of individualism (construction, creativity, responsability) and a sense of community (for the importance that dialogue has in everybody’s everyday life, solidarity). Education therefore becomes a ‘lighthouse’ for creating a City for All, because, as Malala Yousafzai says “a child, a teacher, a book and a pen can change the world”.

Scritto da Maria Irene Messina, marzo 2021