The exhibition presents twelve samples of global coastal cities – Abu Dhabi, Cape Town, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Marseille, Naples, Oslo, Rijeka, Rio de Janeiro, Sydney, Tangier, Trieste – illustrated through their redrawing in the manner of the New Plan of Rome published by Giovan Battista Nolli in 1748. The final outcome is the result of a rewriting exercise, developed within the course of Theories and Design of the Public Space of the Master’s Degree in Architecture at the University of Trieste. The rewriting exercise allowed to identify and interpret different types of space and to systematize and deepen the knowledge of the contemporary city with respect to the urban planning project at different scales, also in light of the objectives of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations such as sustainable cities and communities and the fight against climate change. Within cities, open spaces are dynamic environments with a long tradition in terms of design, modification and stratification. Here, the ongoing changes in society are revealed and take on particular emphasis. Investigating the forms, features and devices that urban open space is equipped with, specifying its semantic value of inclusion and exclusion in the ways of using and being in public space, has meant critically discussing the value and potential of the project in the contemporary city. In light of the ongoing challenges – both climatic and socioeconomic – and of an increasingly complex transformative framework, the hypothesis put forward is that open spaces could host experiences capable of reflecting on the quality and value of contemporary urban planning, in order to define new uses and performances in an ambitious and premonitory way.