DPU BUDDLab Volume 12 published

For the twelfth year running, BUDD Camp 2020 took place in Brescia, Italy in partnership with the Associazione per l’Ambasciata della Democrazia Locale a Zavidovici (ADL) and Local Democracy Agency Zavidovici (LDA) from February 7 to 10. Each year we have focused on different aspects of the city and its surroundings, attempting to relate how the city negotiates its form and life with its dwellers at different scales. This year the focus was on Punti Comunità (Community Centres).

Over a three-day period students investigated visible and invisible socio‐spatial relations between urban dwellers – residents, migrants and refugees – within certain sites in the city. They reflected on the multiple practices of the different Punti Comunità and their potential to facilitate community cohesion and sense of place with particular reference to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in the city and the neighbourhood. By interviewing participants and neighbourhood dwellers, they developed strategies to improve, enrich and stimulate synergies within the local community and civic participation. Various community centres were given the opportunity to reflect on their reality by engaging with staff and students and expand their capacity for social research and project design.

While our focus on co-habitation processes in community centres was a purposeful move, carrying out this work at the brink of a pandemic was unanticipated. This year’s publication of BUDDLab Volume 12 is unique in that it is a door that falls at a fulcrum between a pre and post-COVID 19 world.

The 12th volume of the BUDDLab is available on the BUDD Camp Page, or directly can be downloaded directly here (PDF).