Autant en emporte le vent... Espaces et populations dans la métropole de troisième génération

Le présent essai vise à placer les changements de la morphologie physico-sociale des villes contemporaines dans un cadre théorique, en tentant de décrire comment la combinaison de deux trajectoires technologiques interconnectées, l’une dans le domaine de la mobilité, l’autre de l’information, affecte la forme physique de la structure urbaine actuelle qui encourage la création et la diffusion des MUR (Mega Urban Regions). Dans ce processus, un rôle déterminant est attribué au développement d’appareils ménagers, qui économisent temps et travail (réfrigérateurs, lave-linge), et d’autres qui consomment le temps épargné mais connectent aussi le foyer avec le monde : téléphone, TV, internet. Plus de temps chez soi signifie une pression en faveur de résidences plus spacieuses et, toutes autres choses étant égales, ces dernières se rencontrent plus facilement dans les zones périurbaines de la nouvelle métropole. Ce développement a été favorisé par les vagues successives de motorisation privée qui depuis peu font face au défi posé par les questions d’environnement et d’énergie. Actuellement, la métropole change aussi sa morphologie sociale, avec l’émergence des NRP (populations non résidentes).This essay tries to put changes in physical and social morphology of contemporary cities in a theoretical frame by attempting to describe how the combination of two interrelated technological trajectories, one in the mobility and the other in the information field, affects the physical shape of contemporary urban structure promoting the creation and diffusion of MURs, Mega Urban Regions. In this process an important role is attributed to the development of machines for the house that save time and labour, such as the refrigerator or the washing machine, and of those that consume the time saved, but also connect the den with the outside world sucking the agora into the house, such as the telephone, TV, or Internet. More time at home means a pressure for roomier abodes and, other things being equal, the latter can be found more easily in the periurban areas of the new metropolis. This development has been favoured by successive waves of private motorisation that only recently are being challenged by environmental and energetic issues. Contemporarily the metropolis changes also its social morphology with the emergence of Non Resident Populations NRPs

The New Social Morphology of Cities

The seminal work on the urban question by Salvatore Cafiero and his collaborators carried out at Svimez in the late sixties is recalled and reconsidered, stressing its rigor and originality, in the present context of transformation of urban systems. The masterful teaching by Cafiero is still valid and relevant when attention turns to the structural and functional configuration of the new town and when, in an unhappy scenario of largely purblind policy makers, solutions are sought for crucial issues such as the critical conditions of mobility in the large metropolitan centres.Urban Analysis

GONE WITH THE WIND: PHYSICAL SPACES IN THE THIRD GENERATION METROPOLIS

This paper makes an attempt to deal with the description, and possibly the explanation, of the profound transformation of the city, and of the changes in urban experience and practices, connected with the shape of contemporary urbanization. I stress the term description, because as it occurs in all periods of fast social changes, our conceptual tools tend to become blunt before we realize that normal science keeps failing us. The city is a complex and ambiguous object, as it is constituted by two parts, or orders of facts, inextricably bound. One is visible, i.e. observable through physical wavelengths: the other is not physically visible and can be grasped only by intellectual tools. Arrangements in the second order of facts, though, are responsible for arrangements in the first one, in the sense of producing them, and these in turn affect the former ones, although in ways and in degrees that are far from being clear. In general, decoding between the two order of facts is hazardous and has not produced a set of rules widely consented upon. This is why I remain very skeptical and in some cases outright critical of models stressing continuities in the concepts of civic organization, by referring to traditional urban forms. Reminiscent of Anthony Gidden's sharp statement that the city is one of those social forms that display "a specious continuity with pre-existing social orders" (Giddens, (1990) The Consequences of Modernity, Stanford University Press, Stanford, p. 6) I will try to etch analytical tools capable to clarify at least a few processes that are shaping civic life in contemporary metropolis.Metropolis, populations, community networks

Le città creative e il territorio

3nonenoneMartinotti, Guido; Sacco, Pier Luigi; Tinagli, IreneMartinotti, Guido; Sacco, Pier Luigi; Tinagli, Iren