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Urban settlements are made by spaces and buildings and also by financial, social and management aspects. However, considering a city as a built environment to be inhabited (what the Greeks called oikouméne) means considering also values, which escape the current conception of the exchange between human beings and instead pertain to the non-monetary spheres of simple use, of symbol, desire and gift. Attention to these issues requires a new type of competence. The Nanjing case of the XiaoXiHu project can be considered as a laboratory for new urban morphology studies and innovative project procedures, shared by researchers with different cultural horizons. China's return to ownership regimes is not only a paradigm shift in the conditions of finance and of market, but (perhaps paradoxically) also a rediscovery of precisely non-monetary economies and a possible consideration of the urban form as a common good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]