Does culture create beauty? The experience of the Culture Urban Future Plan, DGAAP MIBAC, within the Italian debate on the regereration of urban peripheries

The Future Urban Culture Plan (Piano Cultura future urbano) is a project of the MiBAC - Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities, which was created to promote cultural initiatives in the peripheries of metropolitan cities and in provincial capitals throughout Italy. An action plan of 25 million euros by 2021, which will finance the construction of new services with the aim of improving the quality of life of the entire urban community, giving new personality to schools, libraries and public works that have remained unfinished. A cutting-edge intersectoral project that calls for civic collaboration, a pact with civil society that aims to promote the conditions under which citizens can cultivate their talents, not only in a strictly cultural but also human context ". This plan today constitutes the major effort produced by an important and innovative Italian public department, the current Directorate General for Contemporary Creativity and Urban Regeneration, formerly Directorate General for Art, Architecture and Peripheries, born within the MIBAC, which for some years has launched an unprecedented cultural promotion action in Italy, straddling different and generally separate disciplinary fields, developing “numerous researches and initiatives on the cataloging and inventorying of art and architecture, as well as a cognitive analysis of the conditions of the Italian peripheries ", together with the promotion of public calls aimed at promoting new forms of attention through pilot actions in the debate on the redevelopment and regeneration of cities. The paper tries to formulate a first critical balance of this experience, still ongoing, starting also from some direct experiences - Call for Cineperiferie 2017, “Biblioteca Casa di Quartiere” call, 2019 - reflecting on the many opportunities, strengths, but also weaknesses and risks that this new kind of approach seems to reserve within the more general Italian and international debate on urban regeneration of marginal urban environments and more marked by conditions of inequality and social exclusion.