Garbage can order. A case study on a problematic green public urban area

Between scholars and politicians there is a wide agreement on government in cities and consequently on the necessity of governance. However there is also a great confusion concerning how to build a democratic decision process and (there is) confusion about the public administration role in this process because anyone knows how to manage with the disorder. The increasing importance of "local" as a resolution key to compose social order drives to concentrate the attention on local conflicts and on their solution. The paper introduces a case study focused on a green public area considered as a problem from different point of view and from different types of population/users. A great public mobilization involved the area to settle the matter and to work it out. The rebuilt order can be described as "garbage can order" that is "temporal order". That means there was no governance, total absence of legitimization process for all the involved actors and any debate arena was built by public administration. There was a "not-governed" order, that is an "organized anarchy". What is pointed out is the necessity of an active role of public administration in order to allow a real social composition of conflicts and a real shared and social constructed order.