Sharing the Neighborhood via Facebook
In the menu offered by city administrations to make the lives of inhabitants more pleasant, and provide them with occasions for leisure, socializing, and cultural enrichment, there are two emerging trends over the last few years: the social street and social eating.
These are two new opportunities for facilitating social networking that are rapidly expanding across the globe and are based on the smart land model and on the use of social media.
Urban areas are increasingly becoming smart cities. Smart cities are characterized by diffuse policies and opportunities that not only improve local attractiveness, but also promote social cohesion, by devoting special care to the natural and urban environment, as well as to the cultural environment as facilitator of knowledge. The ultimate aim is to improve the residents' quality of life. In all this, digital technologies play an essential role: they enable energy conservation and responsible usage of common goods, and empower citizens, while fostering social interaction.
A social street's objective is to help you socialize with neighbors in the place you live for the sake of bonding, sharing needs, exchanging skills, creating common projects, and thus benefiting from increased social interaction. The prime driver is often a group created on Facebook.
The idea was originally conceived in a narrow street in the center of Bologna, and the social street model has been imitated in the rest of Italy and the world (e.g. the case of Nelson, Australia). Also through tourist guides illustrating the street in question, residents are shown art and historical sights in the proximity of their homes; private gardens open their gates to the locals, music events are organized, and historical homes get restored (in Bologna, the building where the painter Giorgio Morandi used to live).
Some streets are evolving beyond the basic model, for example by transformative initiatives such as bookcrossing in neighborhood free libraries (e.g. in via del Triumvirato in Bologna and in Ferrara's via Pitteri); in other cases, they have created gardens and decorated their street with planters and flower pots: social streeters are in effect proximity volunteers, who via social media express their shared interest in re-greening the 'hood (see the examples of Marzalesco in Novara and of Finale Ligure).
Social eating events, also known as open kitchens or guerrilla kitchens, occur in private homes, where owners organize dinners for few strangers with the idea of having the people at the table socialize. At the end, diners leave a money donation for groceries and the cook's work.
In Italy, hidden restaurants are a novelty, while abroad they are more established, especially in the UK and the US, where a range of different experiences can be found: from home cooking in a one-bedroom apartment to temporary pop-up restaurants, where a Michelin chef works in the kitchen and required donations can be really steep. The success encountered by social eating lies in the fact that it enables people to widen their social networks, in order to find work or bring in additional business.
Certainly, social eating and social streets are useful tools for residents left behind in the city during the summer to share their free time, and tourists also benefit from being informed of the particular characteristicsof a given locality. It goes without saying that citizens living in "smart places" are better able to exchange experiences and emotions in a constructive way that benefits the whole community. Thus, the Web is no longer just an opportunity for virtual socializing, but it is being put to the service of actual sharing and collaboration among inhabitants, thereby breaking the isolation in which city-dwellers often, and paradoxically, find themselves.