ABSTRACT

In Chapter 1, we started our research journey, investigating the state of the art regarding contemporary urban theory, the main challenges we are confronted with and the responses so far given. In Chapters 2, 3 and 4, we followed a research path based on the empirical accumulation of data and analyses regarding three different, and each internally articulated, urban contexts: the European, the North American and the Asian. No implicit evolutionary theory is embedded in this research strategy, based on the historical ‘linear’ evolution of the urban models across time and space. Instead, there is a basic assumption that such urban forms taken in a diachronic sequence tend to maintain their distinctiveness and not to coalesce in an undistinguishable urban universe. In Chapter 5, we looked into the theoretical body of literature that we consider useful to understand the changing patterns accounting for the empirical phenomena observed. In Chapter 6, a common matrix was designed, based on a number of selected indicators in order to give a measure of the commonalities and huge differences among the 10 cities of our research. In this final chapter, we will evaluate some conceptual, explanatory and policy tools growing out of our research, and their theoretical and political implications (see Figure 7.1). In the meantime, we have traced out a genealogical tree of the fundamental theoretical approaches and paradigms confronted in the past century around the question of world urbanization forms (see Figure 7.2).