A bus as a public space. Multiculturalism and Urban Ethnography in Milan

Abstract The paper draws on a research and teaching project carried out with an international class of students in Urban Ethnography in the MSC in Urban Planning and Policy at Politecnico di Milano (Italy). A particular focus of the project was on exploring the role played by public spaces in supporting the coexistence of a multitude of strangers in the city through the continuous negotiation of diversity and difference. In the field work, spatial and social dynamics occurring in a particular and ‘compressed’ public space - the 90-91 trolley-bus circle-line in Milan - are explored and discussed as a space of confrontation in a perspective of daily multiculturalism.