What is the quality of a city? Ways of thinking spaces that change

Understanding the effects of a metropolis' changes in scale - the rate of growth and its speed - rather than pursuing the search for optimal city size, is mandatory. The New Urban Agenda discussed performance dimensions of the contemporary city’s functioning mode, knowing that place quality derives from a mutual effect with the society that uses it. However, our research focuses on how city performance dimensions can be measured to establish the values of the metropolitan form that are capable of endowing metropolitan projects with meaning. The Metropolitan Paradigm of inter-scalar connection and the Metropolitan Architecture Project Hybrid Typology are the references to measure the metropolis’ performance. The Metropolitan Paradigm concerns the five city dimensions: physical, economic, energetic, social and governance. In particular, the aim of the paper is to study the physical metropolitan framework and its impact on the lives of metropolitan inhabitants, socio-economic flows and the meaning of the concept of "environment" today. The city is still analysed as a spatial phenomenon represented by data/quantities related to space. Nevertheless, the value of form plays a fundamental role within the Metropolitan Discipline at all scales, as spatial relationships within metropolitan settlements are increasingly not metric but relational. In conclusion, we study the connection between history and geography, environmental issues, the Metropolitan Structural Paradigm, and the new Public Realm heterogeneous elements to represent the metropolitan quality and living-related values that constitute the Metropolitan Democracy’s opportunity.