While scholars agree on the reasons behind the current proliferation of urban, small-scale, pre-organised events, the implication of these events for public life is more controversial, and involves polarised debates between enthusiasts and critics. This paper develops an international comparison between one city district in Milan (Italy) and one in Lund (Sweden), in order to explore how the variety of events that took place there between 2013 and 2015 possibly affected the local and on-going everyday public life. In both cases, the observed events aimed to de-stigmatise the broader urban districts in which they were staged, as well as to enhance a vibrant urban life in relatively disadvantaged areas. In the study, we identify three different ways in which these events make the public character of everyday life visible, and even redefine patterns of urban civility. The main argument deriving from our comparative ethnography is that the salience of events in the everyday life that they supposedly disrupt can be analytically addressed by developing a pragmatist approach to public space, discussing it in terms of territorial complexity.

Despite the spread of a variety of small-scale civic events, little is known about their potential for promoting innovation and field-wide implications. This paper addresses these points drawing on a study of 52 civic events in Milan between 2006 and 2010, which were set up by 10 nonprofit organizations within a shared local field. In order to assess if and how the observed events relate to a number of transformations that the local field underwent during the research period, an analytical typology of events' development is proposed. The results suggest that patterns of events' development are not neutral with respect to the production of field-relevant implications and that the triggering of social innovation processes by events requires pro-active public participation in their development processes.

No abstract

The paper discusses the emerging forms of civil society in the NoLo area of Milan that have acquired political relevance by deploying a combination of leisure and activism. The heterogeneous set of initiatives and events that, using the NoLo label, animate the urban space have two distinct traits: firstly, they exert a subtle political action which is played out at a cultural level, in particular in their ability to draw on and influence common sense and taken-for-granted perceptions; and secondly, the chosen initiatives effectively influence local policy-making processes, in line with the neoliberal governance of the city and the authorities' promise to govern not just for the citizens but with them. The case study provides an empirical illustration of an emerging urban civil society, with specific attention on its functioning, how certain situated events were set up and unfolded, and two specific episodes of involvement in local policymaking es. The proposed research findings-including the exclusionary/ inclusive pattern that shapes citizens' involvement, the consensus-building strategy enacted by the studied civil society and the increasing political relevance of bottom-up urban initiatives-illustrate the meaning of governing through leisure activism in Milan.

No abstract