Urban ecology

This volume is based on an International Workshop organised by the ESF European Science Foundation’s Forward Look in Urban Science, FLUS, and the QUA_SI Center for the study of Information Society of UNIMIB, Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca. The layout of the volume is based on the consideration that two models of urbanisation face one another in the emerging European Urban Space. One is the traditional European model, albeit with its innumerable variations, but with a common basic unity rooted in the ancient European semis urbain blueprint, revisited during the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The other is the North American metropolitan core-ring type, which evolved in industrial times, mainly around productive settlements and encircled by a vast urban sprawl patterned by Daily Urban or Functional Urban Systems (DUSs or FURs). Both models are currently experiencing the same pressures toward the formation of energy-gobbling large scale conurbations, pushing outwardly the edges of the urban frontier in many directions. This process depends on the diffused availability of transportation means and of relatively cheap energy, but it unfolds in combination with a number of intertwining changes affecting the organization of work, family and housing structures as well as lifestyles, consumption patterns, and communication practices. It is not clear whether the European township model will be able to adapt efficiently to the emerging metropolis, avoiding the dangers of social and territorial segregation that accompanied the development of the North American metropolitan areas, while retaining the rich cultural heritage that characterized its urbane way of life over the course of many centuries. But there is little doubt that both models, as well as urban systems in other regions of the world, are subject to the same structural factors that tend to thwart, but not necessarily cancel, the original specificities and traditions. On the other hand, in a highly interdependent world of boundary-pounding markets, local traits are often given new life and displayed in a refurbished fashion. Thus, economies merge with the culture of cities in new and challenging ways. The book explores this complex situation bringing together a variety of social and natural scientists from different countries ( Giandomenico Amendola, Armando Bazzani, Virginio Bettini, Nicolò Costa, John Eade, Roger Friedland, Marisol Garcia, Bruno Giorgini, Lila Leontidou, Mario Liverani, Leonardo Marotta, Giampaolo Nuvolati, Fortunata Piselli, Richard Prentice, Sandro Rambaldi, Saskia Sassen, Edward Soja, Giorgio Turchetti) to provide an all-round image of the world dynamics in urban development.