1 Il nuovo paradigma della mobilità: tra scienze sociali e urbanistica. Bruna Vendemmia Politecnico di Milano DAStU - Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani Email: bruna.vendemmia@polimi.it Abstract Mobility can be a very ambiguous subject depending on the point of view of the observer. Kaufmann noticed that “when geographers use the term mobility, it is to signify the idea of movement through space; they are not talking about the same thing as traffic engineers or sociologists, who use it to refer to transportation flows or social change” (Kaufmann, 2012). Historically social scientist and planners had completely different approach to mobility (Tarrius, 2000; Kaufmann, 2002 and 2011; Colleoni, 2008). While sociologists consider mobility as a movement in social space, meaning a change in the role or the status of an individual, without taking into account the relation with spatial mobility; geographers, planners or transport engineers refer mainly to people flows, physical accessibility and transport based on static models. In so doing they miss both the temporal dimension and the link between the spatial movement and the complex system of choices that determines it. This paper proposes an interpretation of mobility as a crossing border concept between different disciplines. In particular I will borrow from a sociological approach the idea of “reversible practices of mobility” to disclose, through the analysis of some case studies the importance of this concept for urban planners and designers. Using the concept of reversible mobility practices it will be possible, actually, to show the importance of new methods to study the relation between people and territory and highlight new ways of territorialisation. Parole chiave: mobility, urban practices, social practices, tools and techniques 1. Introduction Nowadays more and more people live their lives across a stretched space made of work, family and friend’s networks, travelling across a larger territory then ever before. This phenomenon is wide and can reveal itself in many different ways; it includes, in fact, kinetic nomadic elites travelling all around the world in high speed/high coast transports, as well as people which are obliged to travel as, for example, migrants. Though, it is also made of an increasing number of ordinary people travelling in their everyday life along more mundane paths. In particular, some authors highlighted the increasing of more reversible forms of mobility (Kaufmann, 2011) at the expenses of less reversible ones. Following an interpretation diffuse in social science (Kaufmann, 2005), the terms "reversible / not-reversible" mobilities refers to the possibility for an individual to return or not into a previous status after a movement (Kaufmann, 2005), that is to say to restore initial spatial and social conditions through certain practices of mobility. Thus, the availability of ICT, the increasing use of smartphone and tablets and faster means of transport tended to nullify the impact of spatial distance on travellers, and foster the diffusion of more reversible mobility practices. My hypothesis of research is that upon the occurrence of more reversible practices of mobility also the relation between people and territory has changed. The concept of reversible mobility, originally defined in sociology, will be applied to the analysis of the relation between people and space. Reversible mobility help us to evaluate the impact of mobility in people everyday life from a functional, relational and existential point of view and then to figure out the spatial transformations that follow it. In this paper I will, therefore, based on a well known literature in sociology and demographical studies, define the concept of reversible mobility flows, introduce the idea of reversible mobility practices and present a hybrid methodology that mixes: interview, ethnographic observation and mapping (fare riferimento al testo su Perugia). This in order to analyse in which way new practices of mobility, are transforming the relation between people and space, and how urban designers and planners can use this knowledge to deal with this transformations. I will especially look at the transformation due to long distance commuting, shuttles, overnighters or living apart together, which has been already accepted in the current sociology as more reversible forms of mobility (Vincent-Geslin, Ortar, 2012). Though we have to consider that Mobility can be a very ambiguous concept depending on the point of