Éthos della vita urbana: tracce di utopia per una sostenibilità relazionale = The Ethos of Urban Life: Traces of Utopia for a Relational Sustainability

Abstract

This article examines the contemporary crisis of urban dwelling as a condition of existential and relational uprootedness, advancing the concept of “relational sustainability” as a normative framework for rethinking the ethos of urban life. By considering dwelling as a fundamental anthropological structure of being-in-the-world, the erosion of place-based rootedness generates disorientation, identity fragility, and weakened social ties. Recent analysis of transformations in late modern urban contexts highlights processes of functional separation, socio-spatial segregation, and fragmentation, that have a significant impact on social capital. The crisis of metropolitan relations is further explored through the lenses of anonymity, urban overload, and social disengagement, with particular attention to the ambivalent role of digital technologies in reshaping social interaction. In response, the article proposes a relational redefinition of sustainability, grounded in practices of care, reciprocity, and minimal mutual recognition. Special emphasis is placed on “third places” and low-intensity everyday interactions as key mechanisms for fostering trust and belonging. Relational sustainability thus emerges as a “positive utopia”, that is, as a critical-normative project aimed at reconstructing the social fabric of urban life.