Geography of territorial processes
Academic Year 2025/2026 - Teacher: TERESA GRAZIANOExpected Learning Outcomes
- Knowledge and understanding: students will gain knowledge in the field of urban geography, with a specific focus on the transcalar patterns of territorial organization. Furthermore, 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.
- Applying knowledge. Students will be able to use theoretical and analytical tools of economic geography useful for planning, managing and safeguarding the territory and landscape, 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.
- Making judgments: students will be able to critically evaluate structural characteristics of urban and rural spaces, by catching their inherent complexity.
- Communication skills: The student will be able to transfer to others, with a full command of technical language, information and assessments about territorial systems.
- 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.
Course Structure
Lectures (also based on interactive digital tools)
Seminars
Case study analysis
Flipped classroom
Workshops
Fieldworks
Information for students with disabilities or learning disorders
As a guarantee of equal opportunities and in compliance with current laws, students with disabilities and learning disorders can ask for a personal interview to plan any measure based on their specific needs. The department reference person for CInAP Center for Active and Participatory Inclusion of the University is professor Anna De Angelis.
Required Prerequisites
Attendance of Lessons
Detailed Course Content
The course is focused on the transcalar geographical analysis of territories, 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 theoretical exploration, 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 exploring the multidimensional character of sustainability, social frictions included.
Textbook Information
Textbook 1. Chiodelli F., Rossetto T., Vanolo A., Città. Introduzione critica alla geografia urbana, Utet, Torino, 2025.
Textbook 2. Graziano T. (2021). Smart Territory. Attori, flussi e reti digitali per le aree “marginali”, Franco Angeli, Milano.
| Author | Title | Publisher | Year | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Graziano T. | Smart Territory. Attori, flussi e reti digitali nelle aree "marginali" | Franco Angeli | 2021 | 9788835119517 |
| Chiodelli F., Rossetto T., Vanolo A. | Città. Introduzione critica alla geografia urbana. | Utet | 2014 | 9788860084323 |
Course Planning
| Subjects | Text References | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Concepts: Environment, Territory, Landscape in Geography | Learning Material provided by the teacher |
| 2 | The urban kaleidoscope: definitions, categories and description of cities | Text 1. Cap. 1,2. |
| 3 | Processes and stages of urbanization | Text 1. Cap. 2 |
| 4 | City and economy | Text 1. Cap. 3 |
| 5 | Politics and city government | Text 1. Cap. 4 |
| 6 | City as a cultural space | Text 1. Cap. 5. |
| 7 | Urban Geoopolitics | Text 1. Cap. 6 |
| 8 | Habitability | Text 1. Cap. 7 |
| 9 | Differences and conflicts | Text 1. Cap. 8 |
| 10 | Urban Ecology | Text 1. Cap. 9 |
| 11 | Centre and periphery, from urban to regional scale | Text 2. Cap. 1 |
| 12 | From European inner peripheries to Italian inner areas: policies and strategies for marginal areas | Text 2 capp 2,4 |
| 13 | Geographies of rural areas | Learning material provided by the teacher |
| 14 | Theoretical-practical workshop on quali-quantitative analysis of territory and landscape for participatory planning | Learning material provided by the teacher |
| 15 | Fieldworks |
Learning Assessment
Learning Assessment Procedures
The exam is an oral interview at the end of the course. Students attending regularly will present a collaborative project work during the classes and then their theoretical knowledge will be evaluated during the oral exam at the end of the course.
The evaluation will follow the following criteria:
- Learning skills and degree of in-depth knowledge
- Synthesis & analysis skills, appropriate linguistic register
- Capacity of critical thought