Urban Sociology

The unit focuses on the city as a social construction linking its multiple social relations with the spatial structure that supports them, without overlooking a broader view of the processes of urbanization and the consequent questioning of what is specifically urban. From this point of view the unit analyses the city as the spatial framework of urbanization processes but also as a place for people's encounter and the locus where economic and power games take place. The course looks at the theoretical reflection prompted by the urban experience from the origins of Sociology, providing at the same time with the conceptual elements necessary to explain both urban social change and trends of the city in the context of globalization and current political-economic trends.