GEOGRAFIA URBANA E DEI PROCESSI TERRITORIALI

Knowledge and understanding: students will gain knowledge in the field of economic and political urban geography, with a specific focus on the transcalar patterns of territorial organization. In particular, students will gain specific skills about the analysis of processes and dynamics occurring at the urban scale, evaluated through its relations with rural and/or marginal areas.

2. Applying knowledge. Students will be able to use theoretical and analytical tools of economic geography useful for planning, managing and safeguarding the territory, with a specific focus on urban scale and the network of flows and relations occurring between urban and rural spaces. What is more, students will be able to collect, understand and process quali-quantitative data in order to evaluate inherent characteristics of urban and rural spaces, apart from using them in a systemic way within specific local systems. Students will also gain skills in socio-territorial methods of participative planning.

3. Making judgments: students will be able to critically evaluate structural characteristics of urban and rural spaces, by catching their inherent complexity.

4. Communication skills: The student will be able to transfer to others, with a full command of technical language, information and assessments about territorial systems.

5. Learning skills: at the end of the lectures students will have gained the knowledge necessary to deepen and integrate theoretical concepts with practical skills for territorial analysis in urban and rural spaces.

Lectures (also based on interactive digital tools)

Seminars

Case study analysis

Flipped classroom

Workshops

Fieldworks

The course is focused on the transpolar geographical analysis of territories in urban and rural spaces, starting from the main theoretical pillars of the discipline and analyzing them in the different analyzed spaces with the aim of deepening the huge transformations occurred in territorial structures of urban and rural spaces, the evolution of "marginal" areas and their reciprocal influences.

Through the theoretical exploration, the case studies analysis, a series of workshops and fieldworks, the course aims at exploring the relationship between landscape and territory by underlining the inherent complexity and the osmotic relations among cities, rural spaces and marginal areas.

The main objective is to provide students with knowledge and skills about the networks and multi-scalar processes of territorial development which connect urban and rural spaces, inserted in a wider global context, as well as exploriring the multidimensional character of sustainability, social frictions included.

Textbook 1. Governa F., Memoli M. (2011). Geografie dell’urbano, Carocci editore, Roma.

Textbook 2. Graziano T. (2021). Smart Territory. Attori, flussi e reti digitali per le aree “marginali”, Franco Angeli, Milano.