“The metropolis reveals itself as one of those great historical formations in which opposing streams which enclose life unfold, as well as join one another with equal right”.
Georg Simmel

The city represents the place where the society is (physically) expressed, and its morphology is shaped by socio-economic forces at different levels (at macro as well as micro level). The aim of this course is providing the toolbox to identify, read and critically interpret such signs on the urban tissue. Both theoretical and methodological tools will be offered through lectures, seminars and practical workshops.
After an introduction on the meaning of using sociology to “read” the city, the main transformations hitting the society in last decades will be presented and their consequences on the urban space will be deeply explored. Based on the theoretical and methodological tools acquired throughout the entire course, attending students will be asked to design and implement a field-work project to be conducted in Milan’s urban region focusing on a topic that will be decided with the instructor’s assistance.
In particular the course will touch the following topics: post-fordism and segregation; the neo-liberal city and the privatisation of urban space; the creative city and gentrification; migration and spatialisation of cultures; policy of fear and the securitisation of the city.

Attending students will produce a written report of the field-work they conducted, showing that both theoretical and practical elements of the course have been learnt. The assessment will be based on the written report and on an oral exam about the course contents.

Not attending students will be assessed on the basis of a written test with questions about the reading materials:

1. A list of papers will be uploaded on the Beep page of the course

2. Rossi Ugo and Vanolo Alberto. “Urban political geographies. A global perspective”, Sage 2012

3.  X.Chen, A.M. Orum, K.E. Paulsen, Introduction to Cities: How Place and Space Shape Human Experience, Wiley-Blackwell,  2012, ISBN: 978-1-4051-5554-0