07a 08.04.16 Populations-Pasqui
Transcript of 07a 08.04.16 Populations-Pasqui
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DIAPPolitecnico
di Milano
Milan, 4 april 2007
URBAN POPULATIONS:
SPACES, PLACES AND EVERYDAY LIFE
Gabriele Pasqui
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Populations: a fuzzy concept
The concept of population has different meanings in different scientifictraditions
It is used both in natural and in social sciences (demography, geography,economics, ..)
For example:
the people who inhabit a territory or state;
a group of organisms of the same species populating a given area
(statistics) the entire aggregation of items from which samples can be
drawn;
the number of inhabitants (either the total number or the number of aparticular race or class) in a given place (country or city etc. ...
(economic theory) one of the main factors of economic growth (withtechnology)
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A general framework:
the dis-junction between spaces/places and locally rootedsociety
The analysis of urban population should be strictly linked with a general
interpretation of urban change
Without any apocalyptic approach, It is possibile to recognize a radicalchange in patterns and dynamics of the relationship between society andspace.
This change has three main aspects:Economic
Social
Political
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Dis-junction: economic aspects
Globalisation and financialisation of economic worldwide relationshipschange traditional connections between space and production
This phenomenon, that is far from a de-materialisation of a virtualisation of
capitalistic economy, is relevant both at global and at local level.
In contemporary cities, for example, effects can be seen:
in mobility of all productive factors (human capital, financial capital, people,information)
in new forms and spaces of labour
in new relationship between production of goods and services
in new forms of mixitinvolving different economic functions
in a new role of cognitive dimensions of production
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Dis-junction: political aspects
In modern societies politics is based on the link between power and territory.In this link lies the birth of national States.
Globalisation and crisis of national State have brought to a more complex
relationship between space, power and politics.
This is true also at the locale level and in local (urban) policies. It is difficultto govern both horizontal relationship between public bodies and interestand a plural society and vertical relations between (more or less) legitimated
local and general interests.
In these problems we can find the origins of the crisis of local democracy
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Urban populations
In this conceptual framework the problem of urban population is aninteresting example of how these aspects of dis-junction work and whatconsequences they have for representation and policies.
But: what do we mean with the term population?
Tha analysis of Guido Martinotti: he represents schematically various typesof urban morphologies by using a simple combination of four populations :
InhabitantsCommuters
City users
New businessmen
(see annex paper)
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Urban populations: seven examples
5. Everyday commuters
6. Patients and their relatives coming in Milan and using hospital servicesand facilities
7. Young south american street gangs
8. Foreign studens
9. Cyclists moving for work and not work reasons
10. Young people attending rave party
11. Web networks of role game players
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10/22Conc. C. Novak
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11/22Conc. C. Novak
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12/22Conc. C. Novak
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commuters
temporary workers
entertainment users
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What have in common?
Urban populations, in this approach, are different from Martinottispopulations (city users, commuters, ..), because each person can belong tomore than one population
Populations are characterised by the share of some localised practices,even if in some cases their belonging to the population is voluntary while inother cases is more or less compulsory (social and economic ties areimportant)
There is a relationship bewteen populations and practices
But what practice means?
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What is a practice?
Practices is what people do in everyday life together with the meaning oftheir actions
A practice is an interplacement of many practices, subordinate to main
practices aim, the achievement of his object (Carlo Sini). This means thateach practice is not isolated, but is linked in a network with other practices ofdifferent kind, each of them generating their object (that is transcendentalto the practice) and their subject (that is internal, and generated by thepractice itself). There are not things outside practices, but only things
always changing sense and shifting from one practice to another in movinginterplaces (Carlo Sini)
An example: the urban commuter in the train station
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Populations.
Move, creating moving and instables urban geographies at different scales
These movements are very importants (even if some population is stable: forexample older people)
Movements create new urban patterns, strictly connected with movingtrajectories
These movements are linked with time (and especially with rythmes: daily,weekly, annual, or longlife)
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Representations of populations and of theirmovements look like nautical maps: they introduceto a new metropolitan geography
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Three dimensions of movement.
Pattern
Rythms
Scales
See PRIN presentation
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Populations.
Re-create and re-signify spaces and places, through their everydaypractices
Different populations have various relationship with space, but these
relationship can also be relevat for the identity of single persons sharingcommon experiences
Recreating means also spot these spaces and places for a period of time
Spaces and places are both ties and opportunities for populations (their arechamps, using Bourdieu)
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Populations.
Sometimes produce public or common goods (or evils), directly or indirecty.These goods or evils can be considered externalities.
Examples:
Strangers producing urban security in public spaces
These goods (or evils) are not the effect of public policies, but an unintendedsocial effect of social practices
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Populations.
Can express a demand for public policies, but this demand can be differentfrom traditional demand for welfare policies
In some cases this demand is the effect of a constitution of a social
subjectivity (commuters commitees; cyclists associations, ..), but this is notalways true (ballers want basket playgrounds without expressing directly thisneed)
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Consequences for policies
Decision is not so important for populations
The main problems are those of representation
Policies should be pemeable to social practises
Policies should consider everyday life effects