This book explores the evolution of social and urban theory starting from the classic debate in the 19th century. Far from being a “mere” exploration of different definition of City and Urbanism, the aim of this essay is to focus on a multidimensional understanding of Urbanism as a means to see how different disciplines have faced the relationship between people and place. The conceptual starting point is Lefebvre’s idea of the urban as a universal condition not “simply” or “specifically” related to the city, as the privileged form of sociospatial settlement space. According to this perspective, urbanism cannot be considered as a self-evident object: it is the outcome of different socio-spatial processes, involving multiple levels and dimensions. After defining the conceptual categories of the theoretical field, the essay proposes a reflection on the contemporary challenges in the theoretical construction of the neighborhood concept. A particular attention is to be paid to the practices as an euristic tool to understand the relationship between this three concepts: “structure”, “human” and “practice” which constituted the idea of neighborhood.

Download here a pdf version of the book and an English book review by Federico Savini, UvA.

Here the publisher page: «Il Quartiere: il nostro campo di gioco».