LIBRI DI CARLA LANDUZZI

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.

This essay deals with the commuting patterns of the different foreign groups of residents between the centre and the outer belt of the metropolitan system of the city of Bologna. Over the past decade, there has been a decrease in the number of foreign people living both in the centre (main town) and in the villages located in the first outer belt; this has been counter-balanced by an increase in the foreign population of the further external belt, i.e. in the Northern flatland and Southern hilly and mountainous land of the system. In the latter, about 30% of the foreign population is now made up by young people under the age of 18. The place chosen for settling down is generally related with the person’s particular national group and its peculiarity. Each individual migrant, or group of migrants, may follow one main migratory strategy, but we may as well identify for some groups more than one migratory sector, or pattern. Some newly formed migratory patterns related to groups of migrants who are now entering the productive cycle of the economy are especially interesting and worth analysing.

Certain aspects of urban transformation can give rise to psychological and social vulnerability. The increase in residential mobility and territorial fluidity underlying the growth of the new global economy has led to new global and regional hierarchies. In addition, the polarization in the distribution of profit and the composition of work, evident in all the largest cities, places under discussion the notion of rich countries and rich cities, thus producing a new geography of centrality and marginality. The new urban hierarchies require competitive strategies for the global market, entrusted to urban marketing, for which reason the postmodern city entrusts its own reputation to the capacity to activate pull factors in order to be competitive in the urban hierarchization. The hypothesis, confirmed throughout Europe, of a mobility towards large cities leads us to point out certain aspects which we believe to have repercussions on situations of vulnerability. We refer to the link between urban fluidity and growth in accessibility to the city. Considering the scenarios characterizing European cities, and especially Italian cities, we identify new ways of interpreting the phenomenon of vulnerability that we believe can result from the very mechanisms of urban accessibility.