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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


11/22Conc. C. Novak


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

07a 08.04.16 populations-pasqui

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