SOCIOLOGIA URBANA

Course Structure

• SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF TOWN

  Teaching will focus on lectures, seminars on some specific topics, research case studies and possibly the development of individual and / or group projects. Over at the oral exposition of the topics dealt with, during the course the teacher will make use of IT and audiovisual supports.

• URBAN SOCIETIES, CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

  Teaching will focus on lectures, seminars on some specific topics, research case studies and possibly the development of individual and / or group projects. Over at the oral exposition of the topics dealt with, during the course the teacher will make use of IT and audiovisual supports.

Detailed Course Content

• SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF TOWN

  We intend to provide students with the interpretative and methodological tools useful for the analysis of the most recent transformations of urban systems in their economic, political, symbolic-cultural and physical-environmental dimensions. Through the main theoretical approaches to the study of the urban phenomenon and the focusing of the characters that takes the evolution of the urban phenomenon in the history of the development of societies, the course will aim to stimulate the students' reflection and ability to criticize theories and above all on the practices of modern urban transformations, trying to encourage the sensitivity necessary to identify the problems that characterize today's societies and to hypothesize useful projects to face them.

• URBAN SOCIETIES, CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

  The module will also direct attention to the new social morphology of the city, highlighting the urbanization methods typical of the current phase, among which particular importance
  they have assumed the processes of urban diffusion in the last decades. It will be shown how these centrifugal tendencies, however, occur concurrently with the unfolding of processes
  inverse sign, which - as happens in some important metropolises - is producing the revitalization of the central areas of large metropolitan areas. It will be highlighted, in this regard, as from
  time has begun the return to the city of middle-upper classes, for the start of processes of renewal of the central districts and re-use of areas previously occupied by the industry, and how, at the same pace, the new migratory flows have intensified from developing countries, with the consequent sharpening in the city of phenomena of coexistence of socially and culturally heterogeneous groups and of forms of reciprocal segregation and differentiation of living environments.

Textbook Information

• SOCIOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF TOWN

  A. MELA, Sociologia delle città, Carocci editore, Roma, 2006, pp. 15-144.

  C. COLLOCA, “ Urbanesimo”, in G. BETTIN LATTES e L. RAFFINI (a cura di), Manuale di sociologia, Cedam, Padova, Vol. II, 2011, pp. 867-905.

  M. WEBER, La città. Economia e società. Testo critico della Max Weber-Gesamtausgabe, a cura di Wilfried Nippel. Edizione italiana a cura di Massimo Palma. Nuova Biblioteca, 2016, pp. XIX-LXI (Introduzione di Wilfried Nippel; pp. 3-27(Concetto e categorie della città).

  S. SASSEN, Le città nell’economia globale, il Mulino, Bologna, 2003, pp.199-207.

• URBAN SOCIETIES, CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

  A. MELA, Sociologia delle città, Carocci editore, Roma, 2006, pp. 145-249.

  A. MELA, “Il tema dello sprawl e l’ottica della sostenibilità”, in G. NUVOLATI e F. PISELLI, La città: bisogni, desideri, diritti. La città diffusa: stili di vita e popolazioni metropolitane, FrancoAngeli,
  Milano, 2009, pp. 37-50.

  L. DAVICO, A. MELA, L. STARICCO, Città sostenibili. Una prospettiva sociologica, Carocci editore, Roma, 2009, pp. 87-119.

  H. LEFEBVRE, Spazio e politica. Diritto alla città II, Ombre Corte, Verona, 2018, pp. 7-19 (Introduzione); pp. 89-118 (Le istituzioni della società "post tecnologica").