OVERVIEW

The course addresses the themes of quantitative and qualitative urban and regional analysis, through a multidisciplinary approach capable of bringing out the structuring characteristics of the human habitat.

AIMS AND CONTENT

LEARNING OUTCOMES

The processes through which physical-morphological elements together with social and economic processes tend to configure cities and territories in their spatial structures will therefore be explored in depth, moving on a long-term time scale and bringing examples and cases at a global level (even if the primary reference however remain the western city). The course has an eminently critical-descriptive character and contains both a "theoretical" part (the tools for interpreting the urban fact, at different scales and in different historical periods) and an "analytical" part (the interpretative description of cities and urban regions), with a particular focus on the contemporary period, analyzed starting from the dimension of planetary urbanization.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The aim of the course is therefore to bring the student closer to the themes of quantitative and qualitative analysis of the city and rural areas, through a multidisciplinary approach: physical elements, socio-economic processes, uses, practices, rules, aimed at achieving, as a final outcome, a perspective of 'planning vision'. The use of methods,tools and techniques of urban and territorial analysis will allow the student to acquire a good level of knowledge and ability to understand the transformations that have occurred and to read and reproduce the complexity of an urban system.

PREREQUISITES

No prerequisites are required

TEACHING METHODS

The educational path will be divided into three ways:

1- Lectures by the teacher,to introducing and exploring the various topics of the four modules provided

2 - Excursion on-the-field encouraging direct recognition of case studies: Genoa (walking lectures), Venice (three-day educational trip) and/or Pompeii – Ostia Antica – Rome (three-day educational trip).

3- Active participation of the students (possibly divided into working groups) with practical exercises which will be structured as follows:

Critical reading of two basic texts (chosen from a list provided by the teacher) referring to each of these periods: prehistory and antiquity, Middle Ages and modern times, contemporary period;

Critical rendering of the processes of formation and transformation of a city (a neighborhood or block of Genoa or Venice), from its beginnings to the threshold of contemporaneity.

Students who have a valid certification of physical or learning disabilities on file with the University and who wish to discuss possible accommodations or other circumstances regarding lectures, coursework and exams, should speak both with the teacher and with the Department of Architecture and Design's disability referent (https://architettura.unige.it/commissioni_e_referenti_dipartimento).

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

The course is divided into two teaching modules.

The first module focuses on the analysis of urban morphology and building typologies and has as its aim the knowledge of the relationships that are established between a single building (mainly the home, both single and collective), the urban fabric and the shape of the city. The interest here is aimed at the relationship between building type and urban form: how a single building, in being based on a logical structure of form and the organization of internal relationships with the outside, conditions and determines the outcome of a shape of the urban organism and the scenarios that characterize it. In particular, the concepts relating to the definition of type, the classification of building and urban types and the relationships between buildings and cities and between building types and urban form will be addressed. Reading of the historical evolution of the forms of the urban block; the domus, the courtyard type and the terraced type, the hybridizations of the traditional terraced type in some modern and contemporary experiments. The formation of urban fabrics in the historic city: Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Siena, Pavia and other European and Italian cities.

The second module focuses on the theories and investigations concerning the city of the origins of the urban phenomenon, covering a time period from the Neolithic to the first urban explosion in the Mesopotamian area and then in the Mediterranean area (with also references to the manifestation of the urban phenomenon in China, India and Meso-America). Agriculture, language, technology and settlement. The dualisms synecism/foundation and spontaneous/planned. Ancient and pre-modern settlements: matrices, models, outcomes, with particular reference to the Hippodamian schemes and territorial and urban planning of the Roman era. Territorial and urban phenomena in the Middle Ages: a long legacy. Urban cycles. The city-countryside relationship. Economies and geographies of ancient and medieval settlements.

The third module concerns an introduction to the science of complexity and the morphological analysis of cities and regions. The subject of this module will be the tools introduced by the science of complexity: fractals, network analysis, scaling and power laws, evolution / evolutions, self-organization, space syntax, notes on some methods of artificial intelligence applied to the analysis of the territory ( neural networks, cellular automata, multi-agent systems).

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bibiography

First Module

On the concepts of Type, Model, Building Type, Typological Process and for the analysis and knowledge of building fabrics and types:

Caniggia G., Maffei G.L., 1984. Composizione architettonica e tipologia edilizia: lettura dell’edilizia di base, Marsilio, Venezia.

Caniggia G., 1986. Strutture dello spazio antropico. Uniedit: Firenze.

Cataldi G., 1977. Per una scienza del Territorio. Alinea: Firenze.

Lanzani Arturo, 2020, Cultura e progetto del territorio e della città, Milano: Franco Angeli.

Franchetti Pardo V., 2013. Storia della città occidentale (2 voll.). Milano: Jaca Book.

Second module

Dematteis G., Lanza C., 2012. Le città del Mondo. Una geografia urbana, Torino: Utet.

Kostof, S. 1991. The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History, Thames & Hudson: New York.

Secchi B., 2000. La città del XX secolo. Bari-Roma: Laterza.

Soja E.W., 2007, Dopo la metropoli: per una critica della geografia urbana e regionale, Bologna: Patron.

Third module

Lombardini G. (2023), L’habitat urbano. Temi e questioni per una scienza dell’insediamento, Roma: Carocci.

Bettencourt Luis M.A., 2021, Introduction to Urban Science, Cambridge (MA): MIT Press (capitoli selezionati)

Batty M., 2018, Inventing Future Cities. Cambridge (MA): MIT Press (capitoli selezionati)

West G., 2018. Scala, Milano: Mondadori.

TEACHERS AND EXAM BOARD

Exam Board

GIAMPIERO LOMBARDINI (President)

ROBERTO ANDREA BOBBIO

LESSONS

LESSONS START

February 2025

Class schedule

The timetable for this course is available here: Portale EasyAcademy

EXAMS

EXAM DESCRIPTION

Public discussion. on the work (crital readings of bokks and cases) and the booklet carried out.

ASSESSMENT METHODS

The student must have acquired a good command of concepts, methods and tools for the analysis and interpretation of the urban phenomenon.

This requirement will be evaluated based on the following criteria:

Language, technical vocabulary

In-depth knowledge of the methods discussed during the lectures

In-depth knowledge of the case studies examined

Ability to support a multi-disciplinary discussion.

Exam schedule