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FrancoAngeli Journals

Experimental geographies in urban outdoor spaces. Four artistic, playful and co-creative practices

No. 3 (2026)

Representing the urban outdoor: Intimate artistic-geographical encounters with Florence’s Cascine Park

  • Cecilia Pasini
  • Panos Bourlessas
  • Nicola Giorgio
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3280/rgioa3-2026oa23551
Submitted
agosto 26, 2026
Published
2026-10-05

Abstract

This contribution investigates the affective geographies of Le Cascine Park in Florence through methodological experimentation, challenging the discursive stigmatization that flattens the park’s public image into narratives of insecurity. Using the vis-à-vis – an artistic-geographic device for listening and drawing – this research generated an intimate ‘micro-atmosphere’, facilitating a geographical experiment that brings to light subjective and situated perspectives on the park. The experiment reveals a multifaceted present that challenges the park’s stigma: while security emerges as a call for care and management, the connection with nature unveils the park’s value for urban life, captured in its everyday and ordinary more-than-human dimension. The results demonstrate how the vis-à-vis, as a performative methodological apparatus, succeeds in dismantling top-down representations by revealing situated and subjective practices, perceptions, and memories that restore Le Cascine’s status as a vital and free public space.

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