Gentrification e cosmopolitismo a Cagliari. Il caso di Villanova

Even if the city of Cagliari may not be considered an archetypical example of “neoliberal city”, in recent years it has been interested by significant urban projects and investments that seem to reproduce a common neoliberal logic and footprint and that necessarily interact with previous and recent practices and forms of urbanity. Moving from these premises, the paper introduces the case of the district of Villanova, once a degraded area within the city-center, recently subjected to a process of urban requalification and partial gentrification. The main aim of the paper is to detail the logics of the project, the role of the different actors involved within it and the most evident socio-economic impacts of Villanova’s regeneration, focusing on the most visible contradictions and ambiguities of the urban capitalism “made in Cagliari”.