Among the many interventions promoted by The Gate Project in the district of Porta Palazzo, Balôn in the centre is certainly one of the most demanding and complex. The action is located within "Piazza Affari", a place of proposals and initiatives for the development and expansion of the district's economic resources. In this case the objective was focused on Borgo Dora (Dora Suburb), an area of great resources but at the same time faced with some difficult problems. The Borgo has in fact enjoyed periods of florid growth in the city's history, the scene of the initial phases in industrialisation. The waters of the Dora were the primordial source of energy moving the machines in the factories and those producing weapons in the Arsenal. Around these activities there developed the life of a district with a great trading vocation: Borgo Dora has always been associated with the Balôn, a flea market (or rags market, to use a still older name) but also an esteemed antiques market and, more generally, a market for bargains. It has always attracted people looking for those things that cannot be found in other areas of the city, in a world existing in parallel to the official one and in this sense accessible to those who could not access the latter. The various migratory waves, in successive historical phases, have found a guarantee of survival there and the chance to reconstruct their original communities.
All this has created a double identity for the Balôn: for the typical Turin citizen out for a stroll it is a place of delightful confusion, intermixture and vitality. But for those how live there it is also a place of insecurity, degradation and deterioration in the image of the district.
In line with the method of participatory programming which constitutes the basis of every initiative carried out by The Gate, on 14 May 1998, at the Mossetto Recreational Club, in Borgo Dora, a Workshop was held, with 40 people attending, all protagonists in the local community, to exchange points of view and experiences and to discuss ideas and initiatives which can contribute to the creation of a programme of rebirth for the Balôn. The scenario thus created during the meeting established the basis of the structuring of the Balôn in the centre action into three great intervention areas:

• A. Organization and regulations
• B. Urban safety and quality
• C. Promotion and image

Each of these categories provided for a series of actions, some of which were undertaken successfully, others are in the start-up phase, and still others have yet to take off.