Sign of the artisan city

In 2017 the City of Florence started to sketch out the application for UNESCO Creative City for the Craftsmanship, opening in 2019. The application was not selected by the Italian National Commission UNESCO. However, the challenge made it possible to put at the center the physical city and citizens. Contrary to what we thought in the past, the digitization of cities has increasingly turned out to be a not entirely democratic tool because it is often out of the control of its inhabitants. With the advent of the digital dimension, cities are constantly "measured" with different parameters to enter the rankings capable of expressing their qualities (technological equipment, quality of life...). Even this long path, in different aspects, began with a competitive spirit, gradually revealing elements of an extremely complex structure that led those who followed the candidacy to cross real data with the internal and external perception of the city. Often they did not correspond to the numbers of the smart city. The project involved a large number of stakeholders who related in different ways than usual, managing to define the elements on which the projects were developed. The experience, although not having had the desired result, was nevertheless able to highlight how consolidated but not clearly perceived values can be made to re-emerge and help design a new development model.