The growing importance of rationalization processes (Ascher, 2010) in contemporary societies has led to a "reflexive modernization", corresponding to a socio-historical moment in which it is no longer all about using prior knowledge to examine certain actions, but rather permanently examining all possible choices and reviewing them in terms of what they produce. This is indeed one of the main features of the contemporary experience of "living (in) the City", due to the diversity and intensity of stimuli and demands that individuals are currently submitted to in urban settings: the level of uncertainty (and risk) increases exponentially, and individuals can hardly rely on their own memories of similar situations/challenges, or those of significant others (family, neighbors, coworkers, etc.).

This happens precisely because co-presence and proximity are no longer necessary for a number of exchanges and social practices (Ascher, 2010), thanks to the development of communication paths and technologies. This phenomenon, recent and increasingly prominent, of relocation of the interactions, translates into the progressive weakening of local communities. Individuals no longer rely solely on face-to-face contact for the development of meaningful interactions, with the local no longer being the mandatory space for most social practices: work, family, leisure, politics, religion, etc.. It thus emerges a sense of ubiquity and multi-temporality.

Vieira (2008) presents some questions about the relevance of space, architecture and more specifically the accessibility of urban space, which enable/block the development of the experience of living (in) the City. The author questions whether the right to the city, conceived as a material entity, does indeed matter, when the electronic space opens a new frontier to public space, especially in its discursive and political dimension, structured from afar (Vieira, 2008). In fact, the fundamental problem of online social networks, according to the author, has to do with the fragmented nature of the interactions that they generate: typically person-to-person and role-to-role (Vieira, 2008), and what they produce are highly complex and extensive networks. In this context, interaction becomes a self-centered experience (instead of focusing on "us"): online networks tend to allow anonymity and the selection of the debates in which the individual is willing to get involved, as well as the timelines in which these "encounters" with the Other occur.

The Educating City Project requires a kind of participation which is, in essence, antithetical to that allowed by these type of interactions: it requires the establishment and cultivation of strong and dense, but also temporally long and committed, interactional ties; in other words, a recognition of History and an eye on the future of relations.

What we propose in this paper is to discuss, with reference to the urban context, the role of mediation work, both as a strategic means of access to goods and services, and as a tool to assist individuals and groups in claiming and acknowledging those rights connected to the process of using the city.

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