At the origins of Learning Cities: the architecture of participation and the Integrated Education System - Alle origini delle Learning Cities: l’architettura della partecipazione e il sistema formativo integrato

This essay intends to identify the theoretical justification that inspired the current Learning Cities and Educating Cities movements. In addi-tion to the obvious references to Unesco’s ma-jor reports on education for their centring of the educational community and lifelong learn-ing (especially the Faure Report of 1972 and the Delors Report of 1996), we offer two theoreti-cal perspectives by Italian scholars that, when re-read from a distance time, bear witness to the creation of significant prerequisites for the founding principles of Learning Cities: namely, the “architecture of participation”, concept de-veloped by urban planner Giancarlo De Carlo at the beginning of the Seventies and the “Inte-grated Education System” paradigm introduced by Franco Frabboni starting in the Eighties.