RISULTATI RICERCA

Based on research work on a new establishment area near Bologna, the present paper shall deal with a common dream of architects, urbanists and their customers: their shared idea of the perfect city which can be thoroughly planned, their utopia of the new city as it can be observed in the Disney Celebration and in every CID. These realities do not differ much from the urban way of life described by L. Wirth: it is right there that homogeneity and differentiation coexist and become one, thus producing the very distinguishing factor of urbanism as a way of life. Generally speaking, in many periurban areas as well as in the CIDs and in the Gated Communities, there is an attempt to reproduce all the positive aspects of urbanism, while trying to avoid, or at least hide, all the difficulties and negative sides it entails. As Guidicini has long suggested, this approach reaches its highest peak in the rationalism of Le Corbusier. It is therefore possible to see a connecting line along the main stream of rationalism, which affected New Towns and Garden Towns in the past, as well as it nowadays affects the Common Interest Developments, of which the one examined is one significant example.

This paper deals with an empirical research carried out in a well known residential and commercial settlement located near Casalecchio (Bologna). The methods and research techniques drawn from the school of Chicago, have focused on the contact with the people who live in and make use of this "city within the city", investigating their dreams and expectations. This was done following the path of periurban evolution studies, and the works of such urban sociologists as G. Martinotti and A. Detragiache. With reference to a recent work by A. Petrillo, we have then investigated the link between the CIDs and the Privatopias, highlighting on the one hand their utopia concerning safety, good neighbourhood relations and quality of life, and on the other hand the inevitable implications of involution and isolation from the outer society.

The Settling dynamics of immigrant populations differ according to their own perception of the very periurban areas there are moving into. Such areas have developed specific characters and processes of attracting and including the new-coming groups of migrants. The hypothesis we are putting forward is that the groups of migrants can credit a periurban area with a sense of home, and can recreate solidarity bonds within the periurban area they settle down into, according to which opportunities the area itself provides them with. Settling dynamics are aimed at both defensive goals (e.g. one’s identity and peculiarity) as well as active and expansive goals, such as the utilitarian fruition of available resources, which change the periurban structure.

A remarkable increase in the extension as well as in the complexity of periurban areas has taken place over the past few years. The new issue brought about by this change is twofold: on the one hand, we need to discuss whether periurban areas can be regarded as one new place within a metropolitan system which is in fact made up of many different new places, each one of which bears its own peculiarities and characteristics. On the other hand, it is necessary to identify the new ways of territorial fruition and belonging which develop within such new places.

The use made in social sciences of the expression "suburban way of life" reveals great interest for the correlation between territorial and social structures in the larger city. In this essay, we discuss the evolution of the concept of "suburban way of life" in sociological literature. To this purpose, the classical works of Mumford, Gans, Castells and Sennett, as well as the more recent Italian contributions, have all been taken into account in order to explain the history and the development of this concept. Our analysis of the different interpretations of "suburban life" shows that this concept has been linked with negative values, and we investigate the possible reasons of this particular association.

In this essay we shall discuss the relationship between glocalism and city development, with special attention to the development of periurban areas. In order to do so, the difference between the concepts of social belonging and social inclusion is reinterpreted according to the "types of action" classification by Weber, as well as to the community/association distinction. Our aim is to identify new possible research patterns in the field of social bonds within urban settings.

Through this essay we want to try and recreate the history of the debate which developed in France from the 60s to the 90s on the topic of periurban areas. Referring mainly but not only to the French sociological literature, we shall discuss the way in which these new territories came into existence, their definition, and the major common features of the people that inhabit them. The phenomenon of periurban areas, often considered as a step back towards the countryside, is rather to be regarded as part of, and in line with, the process of urbanisation which has taken place in western societies over the past few centuries. A deeper look into periurban areas can help us perceive and understand some of the most significant aspects of the new "emerging city".

The anthropological-cultural dimension failed to achieve the consideration it should have been granted within the sociological analysis of urban areas. And when it did, it was often confined to the analysis of a few specific cases. New urban rituals, as well as new ways in which everyday life is organised on the territory, both play a fundamental part in the evolution of the city shape and structure. Our attention must be focused on the processes through which old myths are overcome and new rituals formed, if we are to understand the dynamics that evolve inside periurban areas: after undergoing a thorough emancipation from the city centre, these areas have become the territory where a varied population coming out from the city settles and proceeds to forge new myths and new rituals.

Following the example of George Lipsitz’s seminal The Sidewalks of St. Louis, the essay draws a series of portraits of those who came to (and left) St. Louis in the span of a century: from the former Native American inhabitants of the area (the Cahokia settlement) to the 1804 explorers Lewis and Clark (the early opening of the West), from the European travellers Francesco Arese and Charles Dickens (who harbored different feelings for what they saw in the Midwest) to the German Socialist Joseph Weydemeyer (a close friend and correspondent of Marx and Engels), from writers Mark Twain and Kate Chopin (so acute in capturing different ages and milieus) to performers Scott Joplin and Josephine Baker (with their great relevance in the field of a mass culture which was starting to cross boundaries both geographical and conceptual), from the millions of visitors of its 1904 World Fair and 1914 Pageant & Masque to modernist poet T.S. Eliot, among the others. In the history of a city whose birth and life stand in the middle of so many things, geographical, social and cultural (a threshold and a hub), the acts of arriving and departing play a central role - one which is further stressed by the highly symbolic contents of such artifacts as the Eads Bridge and the Union Station. The essay thus tries to highlight the often contradictory social and cultural dynamics which led to the formation of the metropolis’s image as a crossroads city, one in which different tensions came (and come) together, giving rise to a complex network of experiences, both private and public.

This paper aims to highlights few collections under custody of Zanzibar National Archives which provide information related to Zanzibar and East Africa. The Zanzibar Archives are one of the oldest and richest Archives in the East African region. The Archives under custody are unique in terms of languages and subjects covered. There are records in English, German, French, Arabic, Asian languages as well as Swahili language: a combination which cannot be found in any of the Archives in East Africa. Collections preserved in the Archives reflect this logical historical sequence. In chronological sequence the oldest material is to be seen under Arabic Manuscripts and Books collection. The United States of America opened their consulate in 1837, followed by Great Britain in 1841, and France 1844. Later, other foreign powers came; meanwhile, Britain, through her long-term influence and position in India through the East India Company, emerged as the dominating force in Zanzibar. British supremacy over Zanzibar was confirmed in 1890 when the island was declared British protectorate. The collections are as well including documents on explorers and missionaries, copies of the «Zanzibar Gazette», maps, plans, and valuable photographic material.

This article is presenting one of the smaller, and lesser known groups, the Norwegians. The Norwegian presence on the island of Zanzibar between the end of XIX century and the beginning of the XX is an innovative and very original subject. Given Norway’s long history as a seafaring nation, and Zanzibar’s importance as a trading port in the late nineteenth century, it is not surprising finding Norwegian vessels making frequent calls at Zanzibar harbour. What is more surprising is the extent this connection had reached by 1905. This year saw the end of the Swedish-Norwegian union, which had lasted since 1814. As the union was dissolved, the new, independent Norwegian nation, viewed it as a paramount task to establish a diplomatic corps and a functioning foreign service to support its trade and shipping. Surprisingly, one of the first Consulates to be established was in Zanzibar. Timber trade grew so much that in 1906 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decided to appointing Christian Janssen as honorary Consul in Zanzibar, whom worked together with Ole Christian Olsen, representative of the Trading Norwegian Company, both with very wide and even amusing tasks, which ended in 1928, with the moving of the Consulate to Mombasa.

In this essay the original town of Zanzibar was located on a peninsula to the west of a creek that was connected to the main island by only a narrow neck of land at its southern end, and by a bridge in the centre that was built in the mid 19th century and another in the 20th century further north. The town of Zanzibar began to spread to the other side of the creek from the mid 19th century, eventually overtaking the old town in terms of both area and population. Zanzibar town is now described as consisting of the so-called Stone Town or Mji Mkongwe (Sw. Old Town) on the peninsula, and Ng’ambo (Sw. the Other Side) to the east of the creek. The geographical division of the town between the so-called Stone Towns and Mud Towns has been interpreted as the normal pattern of Swahili towns. Swahili urban geography was first and foremost a matter of a difference between the haves and the have-nots: the basic division in coastal town society. This basic division was spatially constituted, especially in the kinds of homes people built and where they built them.

The history of the island and of the town of Zanzibar is here analysed within a wider framework, with special focus to Swahili identity and civilization. The multiethnic and multireligious composition, combined to the mercantile essence of the islands and coastal cities of East Africa, led to the creation and to the growing composition of Swahili civilization: the result of a dynamic society open to external influences, but also strongly based on its Bantu origins and traditions. The origins of Swahili civilization have been identified in five main factors, all of the same importance: the nature of the coast; trades between Africa, Arabia and Asia where Swahilis played a role of merchants and middlemen; the subjugation of their society to external powers; its multi ethnic composition; the complexity of this African society evolution. This paper takes into consideration the origins, trades with China, the role of Islam, the Portuguese presence, the urban landscape of the oriental coast of Africa and of the facing islands, the Arabs of Oman presence and its implications, some aspects of land property and of social stratification, and, finally, the coming of the Europeans.