After a brief introduction about the origin and transformation of human settlements, we will face the following questions: What are the quantifiable differences among typical small settlements, villages, towns, cities and megacities within countries? Within a same region, does a typical 2 million inhabitant city, related to a typical 1 million, expect to have a double amount of crime, CO2 emissions, GDP, built surface, street areas, patents, infections...? If so (isometric relation), or if not (allometric), why? What also happens to density, housing price, locational preferences, and to sociopsychological aspects such as life satisfaction, subjective wellbeing physical and mental health? This course shows methodologies and the stateoftheart of urban scaling: a relatively recent area of urban science, investigating how measurable characteristics of cities vary (scale) with their sizes. When they scale linearly the relation is isometric (e.g. double population involves double built area); when not (e.g. double population involves more or less than double built area), the relation is allometric involving phenomena such as increasing returns, economies of scale, economies and diseconomies of agglomerations. It also describes and discusses the stateoftheart of the empirical evidence linking sociopsychological issues and urban living, exploring how they vary across the ruralurban spectrum. This knowledge adds an important theoretical, empirical and policiesoriented tool kit which any urban scholar nowadays should, if not dominate, at least be aware of. The impelling need to best accommodate a few billions of new incoming urban dwellers, plus the eventual change of residential decisions due to remote services, and advances in public transports, robots, AI… pose us the requirement to well understand what would likely happen to certain factors at different settlement sizes and then, by planning, how to prevent or encourage these factors. It also provides scientific inputs to decision making and policies for the renovation of small settlements (of which the world is full and almost ghost) and offers an intriguing new way to evaluate adjusted performance, costs and benefits associated with urbanicity levels.

no

A multidisciplinary introduction to human settlements: origins and developments Urban Scaling: methods to quantify socio-economic and environmental outputs Psychology of living along the rural-urban spectrum Uses for urban, regional and territorial planning New forms of “urban” living?

Modalità mista

Presentazione report scritto

P.D.2-2 - Marzo

Gli studenti possono scegliere la modalità di esame preferita