The Contemporary City: Economy and Society

How do social scientists study the contemporary city? By which methodologies, categories, theories, and with which scientific aims, do they express and understand urban structures and processes? Using elementary tools of visual representation and analysis, the course will examine the socio-economic structure and spatial organisation of the contemporary city. Starting from an analysis of representative cities all around the world, a classification of cities in terms of ideal types will be proposed and discussed. Understanding that cities are systems in continuous change and how this influences the urban project will be one of the aims of the course.