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As evidenced by the data of the Observatory on Social Street – Università Cattolica Sociology Department – shared during the Social Street Forum held in Milan a few days ago, in the cities we witness new collective phenomenon that break the dynamics known in the last decades.
This is exactly the case of the Social Street, a spontaneous aggregation way, born by the Web thanks to Facebook, that materializes in a very close context: the neighbors community of street or neighborhood.
According to the sociologist Pasqualini, Observatory’s responsible, the aims of the Social Street spontaneous groups are purely social: “primary goal is to socialize with neighbors to facilitate everyday necessities, to offer help, to share activities and exchange opinions”.
The idea first appeared in Bologna in 2013 when Federico Bastiani, looking for game friends for his three years old son, created on Facebook the group “Residents of via Fondazza”. The initiative had a great success and is spreading like wild fire in our country, only Milan city have more than 70 Social Street, with almost 30.000 members.
The Social Street are characterized by the use of Facebook as facilitator of the transition from virtual to real. The guiding principles are: territoriality as factor of membership, the total gratuity and spontaneity in relationships. Not less important is the inclusion aspect, that means the attention to seeking what unite instead of what divide with propositive and constructive relationships. It is therefore not allowed to make advertising, political propaganda or religious proselytism.
The first purpose of the Social Street is therefore to recreate sociality and participation in urban contexts always more depleted in human relationships. This experience represents the recovery of models still existent in little or medium communities and once also typical of the big cities, as for example tenements with communal balconies or the courtyards of the past generations.
This phenomenon expresses an innovative form of active citizenship and the Italian experience represents, for the rest of the world, a real model to get inspired.