Town and architecture in the relationships between inhabited and inhabitant. Urban isotropy and architectural individuality

The millennium has been opened will be the time of urban dwelling. In 2007 it seems that the urban population has reached the rural one with a growth curve that does not seem to change its inclination. The city, however, over the past two centuries, has become from a symbol of progress, a symbol of chaos and congestion, necessary place, legacy of last XIXth century industrialization, but at the same place unsatisfactory union of isotropic spaces not appropriate for the inescapable individuality of each inhabitant. One of the last urban utopias of the last century, Broadacre City by Frank L. Wright, was in fact an anti-city made only by architecture, that wanted to return to man the vast horizons of contemplation and architectures corresponding to the individuality of inhabitants. The contemporary city has thickened, on the contrary, following the simple building trade, with ready-made solutions to the physiological needs of housing, aggregating isotropic spaces unable to characterize single places. A new citizenship is rising, however, using since her birth the new means of a genuine cosmopolitanism, which will certainly bring radical changes in the design of housing and architectures, influenced by the new channels of information and the attendance of the virtual world. Which cities and which architectures for the plural and cosmopolitan actual citizenship?

Keywords: Dwelling, architecture, town, land Membership, utopia

Luigi Bartolomei, Architettura e città nelle relazioni tra abitato e abitante. Note sulla dialettica tra isotropia urbana e individualità architettonica in "SOCIOLOGIA URBANA E RURALE" 91/2010, pp 48-62, DOI: 10.3280/SUR2010-091004