OVERVIEW

The course aims at investigating, in a sociological perspective, the main social, economic and cultural processes that transformed  contemporary city redefining its actual morphology and very experience. In outlining the main social effects and territorial impact of these dynamics, a special attention will be devoted to the analysis of residual urban spaces and places, by assuming them as the backstage of the official image each city globally communicates.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims at providing students with conceptual and analytical tools in order to critically reading the socio-economic, cultural and communication processes investing contemporary society and urban experience.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course aims at providing students with a whole series of  both conceptual and descriptive tools to outline and detect the main transformative processes involving contemporary cities.

Particularly, through attending lectures, engaging in collective researches and individually studying, students will be able to:  

• recognize the main (social, economic, and cultural) processes affecting contemporary urban experience;
• critically assess a whole dynamics of transformation (form urbanization, to postindustrial and post-fordist transition, and the primacy of symbolic economies, from processes of gentrification, privatization of spaces, growing of informal and peripheral areas, to the new security ) that are globally reshaping the form of the city;
• outline and analyze the uneven local impact and the spatial effects of such transformation.

PREREQUISITES

Basic knowledge of the main sociological theories and qualitative reserach approaches

TEACHING METHODS

The course is conceived as splitted in two different moments: a first and more extended one, mainly theoretical and organized on frontal lectures, even recurring to images and visual documents, where to outline the main issues at stake in contemporary urban studies; a second, shorter one, organized as a workshop and  based on reading  groups on texts provided by the teacher, where to outline collective researches on specific urban sites and practices, through the methodological approaches developed by social ethnography. 

The course will be held face to face in the classroom, except in cases of emergency, when it will be at distance, on Teams platform. Attending students will be provided with reading texts and supplementary material through aulaweb.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

According to the intertwined perspectives developed in the fields of urban studies, sociology of cultural processes, and communication social theories, the course will outline a series of dynamics characterizing the current, globalized and contradictory urbanization processes. By firstly focusing on homologizing processes (urban sprawl, postfordist transition, gentrification dynamics, real estate market, symbolic economy, cultural policies, big events), the attention will be therefore devoted to the backstage of the official image of the city, focusing on the multiplication of urban boundaries as well as of residual places apparently excluded from these processes, such as informal spaces, vacant lots and terrain vagues.  On behalf of these assumptions, a series of sites and situations will be detected where to develop specific collective researches and investigations.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Basic texts: 

U. Rossi, A. Vanolo, Geografia politica urbana, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2024;

M. Guareschi, F. Rahola, Forme della città. Sociologia dell’urbanizzazione, Agenzia X, Milano 2015

Further texts - one to be chosen among:

D. Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution, Verso: London - New York 2013;

S. Zukin, Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Place;  Oxford University Press: New York 2010

A. Coppola, Apocalypse town, Laterza, Roma-Bari 2011;

H. Lefebvre, Il diritto alla città, Ombre corte, Verona 2015.

L. Queirolo Palmas, F. Rahola, Underground Europe. Along Migrants Routes, Palgrave 2022 (Chapters 1 and 2).

L. Tozzi, L'invenzione di Milano. Culto della comunicazione e politiche urbane, Cronopio, Venezia 2023

L. Ghirri, G. Celati, Viaggio in Italia, 1984, www. https://www.archivioluigighirri.com/artworks/paesaggio-italiano

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

FEDERICO RAHOLA (President)

LUCA GIUSEPPE QUEIROLO PALMAS

LESSONS

LESSONS START

 October 2024

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Attending students have to participate to reading groups and, at the end of the course, to make an individual or collective presentation where to discuss a research autonomously realized whose argument will be established together with the teacher; as an alternative, they may have an oral test concerning the arguments of the course and the  recommended books . Non-attending students will have to make an oral exam concerning recommended books.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

Both in case of an individual or collective presentation of specific researches, and in case of a speech, the exam will verify student’s appropriate knowledge and comprehension of the main social and spatial dynamics at stake in global urbanization processes, attesting his/her ability to read with a critical gaze the transformation processes investing urban territories.

Exam schedule