The increase of asylum seekers in Europe determines the demand for new spaces that must firstly fulfill the reception in response to emergency conditions. The regulation of the phenomenon is at the center of the Agenda of the European Union that, on September 22 2015, scheduled to place hundred and twenty thousand refugees. What I would like to point out here is that this issue is deeply urban because it is changing the city through the new ways in which the city is inhabited. In Turin, the phenomenon assumes particularly interesting characters. Immigration policies, operating within the institutional programs, come up beside the initiatives promoted by the political activism that is attempting to build a parallel model of self-managed care and protection. Both the forms face the same condition of poverty alongside the many other dimensions of poverty that are now strongly visible again within the city. Self-managed initiatives, however, appear to have a greater ability to occupy abandoned or hardly used spaces. The Olympic Village is one of these spaces: for its size and characteristics, it is now a real urban camp. The Village hosts a sort of self-managed enclave whose spaces are governed and regulated to ensure protection and safety. Here, commercial activities are regulated by a micro-credit system, cultural and recreational activities are promoted through specific programs, there is a school, a space dedicated to legal advice, to health care and professional training. Within the framework of policies for refugees, the Olympic Village seems to stage a poor way of living that aims to be exemplary as it expresses so many virtues in managing conditions of scarcity and exhibiting economic emancipation. Observing this contradictory place can help us to reflect about the European City, the ways it is changing and its ability to integrate and exclude.

1. IUAV
School of Doctorate Studies
track: Urbanism
Quirino Spinelli
URBAN CAMPS
The reception of refugees in the cities. The
case of the Olympic Village in Turin.

2. EUROPE - SEA ARRIVAL
source: data.unhcr.org
Refugees/Migrants Emergency Response - Mediterranean

3. ITALY - SEA ARRIVALS - total 153,842
year 2015
source: data.unhcr.org
Refugees/Migrants Emergency Response - Mediterranean

4. Emergencies related to the reception of asylum in Europe today are able to
build (and spaces) cities? How?
The phenomenon is changing the European city? How?

5. Institunional levels of reception
S.P.R.A.R. centers (Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees)
C.A.S. (Special Reception Centers)
C.D.A. (Reception for immigrants)
C.I.E. (Immigrants detention centers, literally Center of Identification and
Expulsion).

9. Via GIORDANO BRUNO
EX-MOI