Città e processi di urbanizzazione, fra tendenze e modelli

Abstract

To point out some general trends of the urban features in different parts of the world, the re-construction of the existing urban dynamics calls for a point of view embedded in the context of critical urban theory and for a relational perspective in the study of urbanization processes on a global scale. The increase of the urban population on a global scale tends to modify the established balance in the relationship between cities and macro-regional areas: the current explosion of the ur-ban phenomenon in the countries of the global South is confronted with the unchanged – if not de-creasing – demographical size of the northern cities. The shifting of the urbanization of the oldest urbanized areas (Europe and North America, in particular) to regions of new development on the one hand, and of utmost poverty, on the other hand, opens up the need to investigate the link between general trends and the variety of social, economic, cultural, legal, geopolitical characters of different places, giving rise to urbanization processes that mix and mingle global and local dynamics.