Retoriche urbane/Urban rhetorics

The issue aims to explore the lexicon (ab) used in the urban policies' definition, both in governmental and in popular speeches, both in the so-called "territorial marketing” and, increasingly, in academic symposia and scientific publications. Several models, ideologies and visions of the city are translated into words that now occur regularly in the speeches that accompany urban policy, often bouncing in different contexts, with the risk to lose, forget or distort their original meaning. Words such as participation, sustainability, creativity, integration, multiculturalism, security, transparency, marketing, gentrification - just to name a few - now belong to common discourses and everyday language. Some of these words have become part of the urban culture, after a long and complex process of affirmation. They are the result of a conceptual definition, not rarely deriving from political negotiations and dispute practices, inevitably located in specific historical and geographical contexts. Today many of these words resonate in many different cities and countries, which nevertheless experience the same processes of transformation dictated by global mechanisms (and by the widespread neo-liberalism). At the same time, these words are used by a number of actors - institutions, professionals, associations and protest’s movements - causing a dangerous ambiguity of meaning. Calling to reflect on this issue, we would like to invite the authors to read some cases of urban rhetoric, linked to specific events or case studies, that can be understood through the manner in which a word has been subjected by a rhetoric abuse, becoming slogans to convey ambiguous values and dubious urban policies. Furthermore, we aim to understand how the use of certain concepts - which also symbolise certain process and phenomena has come to an imposition of the analysis categories and the action tools, often flattening the diversity of the local contexts by means of an homologation/a standardization? in which allows you to locate a number of recurrent pathways, in the urban development in many cities, both in Europe and outside Europe. Within this question, the authors are invited to a broad exploration, which may contribute to a critical update of the urban glossary in common. In facts, we intend to reflect not only about the conflicts that such words underlie and flatten, but also about the different use of the same language, depending on the historical and political phase where the studied realities are going through.