Built and natural environments have always been the set wherepeople engage and voice challenging relations, contradictory feelings, legacies of traditions and many other individual and collective expressions. The notion of identities has been used by academics indifferent research fields to study such dynamics, as well as the roleof the urban space in fostering or resisting them. Particularly, manyhave focused on processes of urban transformation, although thetendencies of practical planning and design towards this topic havebecome increasingly confusing and conflicting. On these premises,this special issue of QU3 – iQuaderni di U3 has been structured as across-disciplinary dialogue among scholars from different researchfields. The aim has been to acknowledge different perspectives asan essential grounding from which starting a critical reflection ofboth theoretical and practical assumptions regarding identities.The reader will confront and actively participate in this dialoguewhich must guide us to a new understanding of those processesthrough which places, experiences and individuals may emerge.