Sottaninrete is a participatory process of urban and social regeneration which aims to reactivate “sottani”, abandoned basements – former warehouses, cellars, workshops – in the historic center of Altamura (Puglia Region, Italy).

Sottani can be seen as a network of distributed urban commons that belong to past uses, but that lends well to welcome new forms of entrepreneurship. They can return to play a role of social cohesion in the perspective of sharing economy.

The first phase of the process was characterized by a collaborative mapping of abandoned spaces, through the web platform www.pophub.it.

After having identified spaces, were defined different tools for reactivation: an open-source wooden kit, named KitUp, and a set of documents such as manifesto-regulation-toolkit, still in progress. In the third phase it has been developed a pilot project, was conducted a complementary project of social storytelling named StaffettArtigiana, which involved the community of craftsmen and created the first digital archive-map of stories about the craftsmen of the city.The goal is the reactivation of abandoned spaces through the involvement of inhabitants and craftsmen. The strategy includes a series of micro-urban tactics, implemented through the use of mobile devices, able to trigger economic and cultural initiatives through temporary reuse. With the completion of the manifesto-regulation tool is expected an agreement with the Public Administration to stabilize and facilitate such practices.