THE LANGUAGE OF LIVING. Words for Giving Form to the Future

The Anthropocene marked the beginning of a new period in history. One of its most relevant consequences is a New Climate Regime in which “all find themselves facing a universal lack of shareable space and inhabitable land” (Latour, 2005). Faced with this situation, territorial planning is at a loss for words when it comes to giving form to the future. This is nothing new. A simi- lar situation occurred in 1867 when Ildefonso Cerdà published his Teoría General de la Urbanización. This was the incipit: “I who am going to lead the reader to the study of a new subject, a completely new, intact, virgin one, in which everything [is] new, even the words, which I had to seek and invent, had to be new, as I need to broadcast my new ideas”. The founding of the field of urban planning was not marked by formal prefi- gurations or projects, but “by new words for broadcasting new ideas”. This is a testament to just how important language has always been to urban planning, even more when the forms of living change radically. At the end of the 1980s, Giancarlo De Carlo and Bernardo Secchi understood that architecture and urban planning had also been affected by a sort of plague of language. This was the moment things changed. For the worse. To the point that many have laid claim to the thesis supporting the need for a new lexicon of living for reinterpreting the urban phenomenon, for restructuring the question, for seeking out a new theoretical awareness. The many experiences made in this direction are important, but not resolutive. Additional effort is needed. It is indispensable that we comprehend how climate change has brought about a metamorphosis that “has already altered our way of being in the world – the way we live in the world, think about the world” (Beck, 2017). It is a metamor- phosis that will concern the forms of traditional living. A meta- morphosis that must be communicated to everyone, avoiding that the awareness of the risks and perils deriving from climate change remain trapped within the closed circles of specialists. The development of language for spreading this information has become indispensable. A language that reaches everyone, in order that they are able to actively contribute to the conser- vation of the ecosystem. Remembering that “Earth is a great winnower of waste and error. Life in its grandeur will go on, but human society, at least in its present profligate mode, may not make the cut” (Hazen, 2017).