Urban peripheries today represent one of the most complex arenas in which the challenge of social inclusion and active citizenship is played out. These areas serve as a true testing ground for the real quality of citizenship. Often marked by a structural lack of services, communal spaces, and opportunities, they risk crystallizing conditions of disadvantage that are passed down from generation to generation—raising the serious possibility that this subtle yet very real inequality becomes a predetermined destiny.
And yet, it is precisely within these contexts that a field of possibility opens up. Organizations like ABF Globalab have chosen to demonstrate how culture and beauty can become powerful tools for transformation—not as mere decoration, but as social infrastructure, as fundamental conditions of human dignity.
This reflection opens onto how organizations such as ABF Globalab are building, each with its own identity, a model of cultural hubs capable of engaging and enhancing the energies of young people living on the margins of large urban centers. What unites these initiatives is a clear vision: to give young people in peripheral areas (and beyond) not just physical spaces measured in square meters, but generative environments—symbolic spaces capable of triggering processes of empowerment, critical thinking, responsibility, and collective meaning-making.
ABF already has a well-established history in this regard. It has operated in places that are geographically distant yet united by their condition of marginality, such as Haiti, the Sanità district of Naples, Jerusalem, smaller communities like Sforzacosta in the Marche region, and—last but certainly not least—the San Firenze complex in the very heart of Florence.
San Firenze is located in the historic center of the city, yet for years it embodied a form of marginality that was as invisible as it was real: that of central urban areas left to themselves and slipping into decay—not due to geographical distance, but institutional indifference. It became a kind of no-man’s-land where petty drug dealing replaced community life. And yet, San Firenze also held a powerful historical memory: it was here, in the sixteenth century, that Saint Philip Neri welcomed the city’s orphaned youth, convinced that offering them a dignified and generative space was both a spiritual and civic act.
ABF chose to reclaim and relaunch that very legacy. The redevelopment project of the San Firenze spaces—carried out in partnership with the Municipality of Florence—has restored to the complex a function that represents a contemporary translation of Saint Philip Neri’s vision: an educational hub for young people aged sixteen to twenty-five. Built around digital, musical, and multifunctional workshops, its focus is not on the transmission of content, but on the emergence of a self capable of action. San Firenze is not a school in the traditional sense; it is a space for orientation, experimentation, and the construction of a life project. Here, “periphery” was not a matter of distance from the center, but a question of belonging to that very center.
At San Firenze, as in all the locations mentioned, the guiding belief has been the same: creating beauty is not—and must not be—a luxury, but a strategy. A well-designed, open, and accessible environment is not mere decoration; it is a clear message. It tells those who inhabit it that their lives deserve quality, that their time is not disposable. This produces deep and lasting effects, far beyond any form of assistance that merely addresses emergencies without transforming the context.
ABF stands out in these settings for an approach that is, in some respects, revolutionary: giving young people a voice, making them real participants rather than relegating them to subordinate roles, and allowing them to tangibly engage with the opportunities offered to them.
This shift in paradigm—from young people as recipients to young people as creators—is not only a defining strength of this initiative; it is the beating heart of a culturally and socially active model that transforms empowerment from an abstract concept into a daily, concrete practice.
History already offers examples that demonstrate the impact of such a model. One particularly significant precedent is the creation of the Centre Georges Pompidou in the Beaubourg district of Paris. Opened in 1977 in what was then considered one of the city’s most degraded urban areas, the project was initially met with skepticism. Yet the Pompidou was never just a museum: it was an act of radical trust in the power of culture to regenerate a territory and its communities. Designed by Renzo Piano with industrial forms, it was conceived as a true “factory of culture.” Its revolutionary nature lay in the fact that it did not merely occupy a degraded urban space—it transformed it, reshaping both the reputation and daily life of the neighborhood. It demonstrated that cultural investment, when genuinely public and inclusive, does not remain confined within the walls of a building, but radiates throughout the social fabric at every level.
It is within this tradition that the experiences of ABF Globalab must be placed. In an era of massive and often uncontrolled urbanization—one that increasingly brings issues of social marginalization to the forefront—the need for spaces where young people from peripheral areas can not only consume culture, but produce it, inhabit it, and become its protagonists, has never been more urgent.
If culture is truly a right, then the places and institutions that create it cannot coincide with a geography of privilege.
Recognizing culture not as a decorative superstructure but as infrastructure also means confronting a challenge—one that ABF is gradually addressing: integrating culture into urban planning processes, public budgets, and educational policies, making it a fundamental element through which individual development is conceived.
This is where the work of organizations like ABF Globalab takes on even greater significance. It is not simply about offering opportunities, but about legitimizing spaces of expression. And in the cultural field, legitimacy is everything: without it, even the most evident talent risks remaining invisible—or worse, being absorbed and neutralized by systems that distort its origins.
From this perspective, the question of space becomes central once again, though with a deeper meaning. What matters is no longer just the availability of equipped physical places, but the presence of cultural frameworks capable of generating meaning—spaces that do not impose models, but challenge them; that do not demand adaptation, but foster mutual transformation between those who inhabit them and those who pass through them. It is a subtle but decisive difference, marking the shift from inclusion to participation, from access to production.
The real test for initiatives like ABF Globalab will not lie solely in the quality of the projects they implement, but in their ability to take root over time, to build lasting relationships, and to generate continuity. Not events, but processes. Not isolated interventions, but ecosystems.
At this point, the discourse on peripheries ceases to be a separate chapter and becomes the very core of projects like ABF. Because it is there, in those margins, that we measure not only the capacity to include, but the genuine willingness to do so.
Marco Giaimi
