THE NEW URBAN QUESTION A CONVERSATION ON THE LEGACY OF BERNARDO SECCHI WITH

PAOLA PELLEGRINI
2_Secchi_Milano_by%20Lambrecths_2006Bernardo Secchi (1934-2014) was an Italian urban
theorist, renowned urban planner, Emeritus Professor of Urban Planning at the Istituto
Universitario di Architettura (IUAV) of Venice and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture at the
Polytechnic of Milano. For almost half a century, he was a central figure within European and
Italian interdisciplinary debates on the contemporary city and urban design. His research was
located within the wider discourses of space and societal transformations, influenced by
post-68 French theorists and nourished specifically by a wide investigation of European urban
territories. In his practice, he developed plans and visions for small and large cities in Italy and
Europe, including Milano, Jesi, Brescia, Pesaro, Siena, Ascoli Piceno, Bergamo, Prato, Pescara,
Lecce, Madrid, Antwerp[1], Bruxelles and Moscow. In 2008 he was amongst the ten architects
selected to develop a vision for Grand Paris[2]; his idea of ville poreuse focused on the
improvement of permeability and accessibility, as a strategy to ensure the fundamental right
to the city. As a scholar and intellectual, he was fascinated by the multiple narratives and
multidisciplinary nature of urban territories. In the books, Prima lezione di Urbanistica (2007),
La citt del ventesimo secolo (2008), La citt dei ricchi e la citt dei poveri (2013), regrettably
not yet translated for English speaking scholars, he placed into creative tension the economic,
political, and cultural dimensions of urbanism, informed by theoretical insights and
underpinned by an engagement with spatial realities and design projects. He treated urban
transformations with vivid, lucid and contemporary analyses that utilized theories as
productive investigative tools to elucidate society and space rather than as merely selfreferential intellectual gestures.
Secchis death in September marks a great loss for urbanism. The conversation below is a
gesture towards bringing his work to a wider Anglophone audience, since little of his work has
been translated into English. It reflects on his legacy by exploring his intellectual
production[3], critical pedagogy and practice, with a special focus on the exploration of his
idea of a new urban question and the formation of his reflexive urban research praxis. The
new urban question was addressed most concertedly in his last book, and is concerned with
the increasing social inequalities and spatial injustice. His urban research praxis, shaped by
long-term practice and experience, voracious curiosity and acute observation, aimed to
dismantle disciplinary boundaries and conventional scales, focusing on a certain idea of
precision, accuracy and patience. We conducted an interview with Paola Pellegrini, urbanist
and scholar, and Secchis associate for 12 years, and asked her to offer a personal and
professional reflection on Secchis intellectual legacy.
Camillo Boano and Giovanna Astolfo
The whole history of the city can be written keeping in mind the compatibility or
incompatibility of the people [] Intolerance denies proximity, it separates and creates
distance between activities, buildings, public spaces, their inhabitants and users B.
Secchi[4]
Camillo Boano/Giovanna Astolfo: Bernardo Secchi wrote and reflected extensively on the
democratization of urban space, the emergence of the ordinary, and, more recently[5], on the
still fundamental issue of comment vivre ensemble (how to live together), a topic you
developed in recent work on proximity[6]. Can you explain it further?
Paola Pellegrini: The search for proximity is part of the patient search for the physical and
feasible dimensions of individual and collective welfare, which was a major topic in Secchis

work (see his La citt del XX secolo [7]) and can be described, in his own words, as an
attempt to give a concrete dimension, physically perceptible to individual collective
welfare/wellbeing[8] and to its distribution among the various social groups[9].
But it also goes beyond this search and refers to the idea that new individual practices and
the consequences on the ways of living together such as individualization and the search for
some kind of network very well explained by Richard Sennett, Ulrich Beck and Zygmunt
Bauman in recent and less recent years are the basis of new ideas of the city and territory.
The search for independent and individual rhythm in the community Barthess comment
vivre ensemble[10]and idiorrhythms-, the recent appearance of various coexistence
experiments in many European urban contexts, the revival of the notion of spatial proximity in
urban design and planning practice are moments of this reasoning, trying to further articulate
Webbers idea of urbanity without propinquity [11]. As an example of this revival, all of the
participants to the plan for the great Paris metropolitan area in 2008-2009, in their different
proposed models or solutions, claim the city must grow upon itself and densify; a
renouvellement of the idea of concentration, density, compact city, direct relations
CB/GA: A challenging concept, related to the intellectual milieu that influenced Secchis
research and practice (eg: Bourdieu, Barthes and Foucault) is that of the right distance
(between buildings, people, functions), but Secchi left it almost un-explained
PP: Quoting Tommaso DAquinos not everything has to be defined, Secchi has deliberately
left the concept open to interpretations. Such openness enables the case-by-case definition of
the right distance, explored through the socio-spatial specificity and political territories of
any urban project. In fact, Secchi used to give great emphasis to the design practice;
accordingly, in the Secchi-Vigan Studios praxis, theories and hypothesies were constantly
tested in urban context and viceversa, in a continuous process of feedback. The interpretation
of Paris as a post-Kyoto porous city can be regarded also as a question for the re-definition of
spatial proximity, in which urban interstices operate to densify (for example in
pavillonnaire[12]), build functional and social mixit (mix), and increase accessibility to the
outer areas (by inserting an extensive network of public transport). Conceptually, the notion of
porosity reviews and renews those of compactness and density.
CB/GA: In his late work[13], Secchi reflects again on socio-spatial distance, taking up
Bourdieus notion of distinction[14], multicultural existence and social inequalities as central
to what he used to call the new urban question. Can you elaborate on his notion?
PP: A new urban question rises in times of great crisis, with the disruption of the economic,
social and institutional apparatuses. Secchi believed that the current global crisis, which he
thought to be radical, and as meaningful and important as other past crises, such as the
massive urbanization post industrialization, shapes a new urban question. Two other main
questions shape it increasing and increasingly visible spatial injustice, and widening
environmental problems and climate change vulnerabilities. Alongside these three issues, in
the development of the idea, he further added the question of accessibility and mobility as
part of the right to the city/right to citizenship[15]. These questions, particularly problematic
within the major metropolitan areas, arose independently and over time became
interdependent as suggested in many traditions of urban studies from Lefebvre to Merrifield
According to Secchi, the crises of capitalist economy, as for
beginning of nineteenth century, has been overcome by a
The same could occur now, with a stronger globalization.
cities? First, it will probably cause a radical decrease in

example the housing crisis at the

stronger concentration of power.
What impact will it have on our
the public investment aimed at

tackling the worsening of social inequalities, and will result in a reduction of public facilities
and services (education, health, transport and housing); that is to say, a progressive decline of
welfare. Secondly, it will probably contribute to an increase of the territorial stigma
(etiquettage), quoting Bourdieu and his idea about the segregation of the misre du
monde[16]. In fact, even if cities have always been the place where difference is spatialized
and therefore dramatically visible, today the phenomenon is even more evident, and the rich
and the poor are less mingled than they used to be in the ancien rgime city.
Studio Secchi Vigan, Grand Paris Plan
Studio Secchi Vigan, Grand Paris Plan
CB/GA: Since social inequality is central to the new urban question, the question then is, what
is the responsibility of urbanism[17]?
PP: Secchi argued that urbanism cannot impact inequality or poverty directly, but it rather
governs those devices that are aimed to produce and reproduce inequality and poverty:
spatial, juridical, procedural and institutional devices, widely mentioned in his texts, drawing
from Foucault and Deleuze, include zoning, distribution of facilities, construction of qualitativequantitative parameters, traffic and transport policy, just to mention a few. What changes
down the history of the city is much more the regulatory sense and role of each device rather
than the catalogue of devices, and it is through this regulating action that the city becomes a
machine for social integration or exclusion as the case may be.[18]
Often we reflected whether our skills and tools are useful and adequate to fight inequalities,
marginalization and poverty. Although Secchi did not share the idea that a designer is a social
or political activist, he was keen on the idea of devising open and flexible projects that people
can appropriate and transform. A project should help peoples aspirations and show the kind
of space that people can aspire to, as he used to say. Ultimately, the role/potential of urban
design/planning is to anticipate possible futures, improving the relation between people and
space.
CB/GA: Do you think that urbanism can be conceived as a device itself, with Foucault, as a
biopolitical dispositif?
PP: That urbanism is a dispositif in itself is not a novelty. What is more interesting is precisely
that it is a set of collated and coordinated devices, linked in some sort of organization or as
Foucaults termed apparatuses. Planning policies and regulations, either holistic or selective,
employ spatial devices such as dimensions, location, separation, connection and housing
typologies that increase or decrease social difference and the distribution of
welfare/wellbeing. In the Antwerp strategic plan, some urban devices were introduced for new
dwelling and living together, learning from existing practices of individual infiltration and
cohabitation, couples with children reused dismissed urban parcel in the historic dense urban
center place of immigrants, abandonment, old people and shops- to create housing solutions
alternative to the suburban flee in the porousness that opens up in the multiethnic urban
fabric[19].
The fear of the other, the poor and the stranger has often fostered the formulation of specific
policies, while the history of the European city can be described as a succession of systems of
intolerance, removal of the difference and normalisation efforts. The adoption of devices to
prevent permeability and accessibility (such as walls, infrastructural and environmental
barriers) in the past, has been replaced today by multiple and complex forms of segregation.

Secchi recalled the different experiences of the new urbanism, from the North American
gated communities (where 10 to 16 million rich people live) to the South American
condominos fechados, barrios cerrados and ciudad vallada, describing them as the negation
of a city where the technical-spatial devices of the city play different functional and symbolic
roles [] place suspended from the legal institutional order of the country they belong to, a
limitation of its sovereignty [] where new and specific forms of governance are created ad
hoc and accepted in a pact of mutual solidarity with its inhabitants[20]. So Foucault certainly
inspired Secchis urban visions, not only as analytical tool but as emancipatory possibility in a
renewed and attentive urban practice.
CB/GA: The vision for Paris widely reflects on the urban question (proximity, environmental
problems and mobility), fostering inclusive, accessible and sustainable production of space, as
the slogan you choose which makes it intelligible: la ville poreuse. Can you explain it further?
[PP] Secchi used to recall Bourdieus notion of social and cultural capital[21] and, more
recently, Edward Sojas notion of spatial capital, related to the benefits derived from social
(network), cultural (education) and spatial assets (housing/work location and mobility options).
Secchis way to address the urban question in the plan for Paris was to create, accumulate or
redistribute (social, cultural and) spatial capital/assets, by increasing accessibility, improve
mobility and access to environmental resources. In other words, by ensuring porosity and
permeability.
The notion of porosity, borrowed from physics but also from literature, i.e. Benjamin, is as well
analytical as a design tool, and refers to the percentage of open spaces in relation to built
spaces and to the possibility to have different flows (of people, public transport, water,
activities, practices, differences and vegetation). Porosity does not only include green areas
and agricultural land, or abandoned, vacant and under-used lots; it rather implies the
possibility to re-signify non-built areas as a whole, especially the space for mobility.
Furthermore, porosity is strongly related to permeability, represented by the single
connections between the pores. A porous city is widely accessible thanks to a new structure
of public transport (a network described by the metaphor of a sponge) and highly sustainable
new biological corridors, as well as, more space for the water network/wet lands.
In one word, a porous city can be said to be isotropic, meaning that it can provide an equal
distribution of infrastructural and environmental conditions, and therefore urban(ity)
opportunities. Secchis concept of isotropy, that was first employed by another Italian
urbanist, Giuseppe Samon, developed into a willingness to dissolve infrastructural
segregation and destroy hierarchies. It has to be remembered, though, that the project for
Paris is conceptual and schematic, a tool to test some hypothesis and produce new
knowledge, rather than a solution per se.
[]The archive that I propose becomes testimony to this effort: to the attempt, for instance,
to overcome the constraints of available resources and techniques, or those regarding
relationships of power, of culture, of taste; to build a city in which different individuals and
group cultures can represent themselves and find their own space [] -B.Secchi[22]
CB/GA: Recalling Secchis definition of space as an archive[23], or a palimpsest, with
Corboz[24], seems to regard urban space as a static reality, albeit complex, where social and
political struggle is deposited or fossilized. Based also on your own experience as urbanist and
pedagogue, what was Secchis notion of space and territory?

PP: Urban space was never imagined or described by Secchi as a static reality. The idea of
palimpsest entails that the inhabited territory is the result of a process of selective
accumulation, i.e. in the continuous process of transformation some elements are preserved
for future generations, while some others are discarded, according to the local values, cultural
and economic conditions. Similarly I dare say there was not one notion of space and territory
for Secchi, but many, as many as the different realities he explored. It is possible though to
recall three moments in which the idea of space has changed: the glorious thirty, the thirty
years of development after the last world war, when middle class emerged and large
peripheries were formed; the rise of individualism and the diffused city after the economic
boom in the 1960s; some sort of return to the compact city in more recent years, which many
claim is resilient or must be to face the crisis, the climate change, and the decline of welfare
state.
by urbanism I mean not so much a set of buildings, projects, theories uniformed around the
common rules of a theme (urban), a language and discursive organization, much less I mean
an academic discipline, but the traces of a large set practices: those of the continuous and
conscious change the status of the territory and the city. -B.Secchi[25]
CB/GA: Such a notion of urban space, as the product of a multiple, complex and stratified
agency, reveals the difficulty of a holistic understanding of current transformations, calling for
a continuous reflection around disciplinary boundaries (architecture and urbanism) merging
economic, social and geographical dimension. What was Secchis definition for urbanism?
PP: Secchi was very cautious about the possibility of attaining a holistic understanding of
socio-spatial urban transformations, and was skeptical about any projects with holistic
demands. Reality is getting more and more complex and the territory is constantly changing,
so being holistic is greatly naive. In such an uncertain frame, disciplinary boundaries were
considered an obstacle for the real understanding of urban transformations, but also an
obstacle for the design itself. Urbanism, according to Secchi, was a mixture of architecture,
urban design and city planning, an act of formation/composition (composizione), that was
differently conceived according to the specificity: in Antwerp it involved a selection of actions
and interventions; in Paris and Brussels a vision about space.
An urbanist should not be a rispecchialista as some Russian artists in the 1920s who claimed
that art can only mirror the contemporary social structure. Nevertheless, he/she should not
think that the future is an extension of the past and present. An urbanist should rather design
the future in order to increase the welfare and wellbeing of inhabitants. Secchi often
mentioned the critique that Leonardo Benevolo, an Italian historian of architecture, addressed
of the planners lack of timing and the habit to intervene a posteriori rather than anticipate
change; building on this, Benevolo also suggested that an urban intervention can be effective
only by addressing its political content.
Facing the increasing difficult task of understanding and engaging with the complexity and
multiplicity of phenomena, Secchi tried to elaborate an alternative approach to tackle
inhabited urban territories, based on a reflexive and investigative method. Averse to heroic
and exogenous plans (so popular in the current climate of urban super expert and archistars),
he tried to reveal embedded socio-political processes, privileging accurate analysis, close
observation and walking through. Walking in the city which is not a metaphor, he walked for
long periods in the cities he was planning and taught students to keep walking in the
territories means concrete experience, progressive understanding of aspects

CB/GA: He was later criticized for such a weak, almost nihilist approach aimed to recognize
intrinsic legitimacy to most urban phenomena, including sprawl. Such a weak, humble
approach to urbanism appears to us as an important element to be disclosed to a wider
public. Can you further elaborate?
PP: Secchis approach was neither humble nor weak, but rather elementarista, as resonates in
the title of the Ph.D. thesis of Paola Vigan, his partner and associate for almost 25 years,
published as La citt elementare. It advocates that the de-composition of a city into its
elementary components is the starting point of the cognitive process as well as of the design
process, which are considered a unity. The reason for this method stems from the recognition
of the difficulty of understanding and grasping the contemporary city, which has radically
changed due to social changes and territorial expansions and contractions. Therefore there
is a need to use the rilievo, that is to say the accurate survey and mapping of every single
element of the urban territory encountered buildings, roads, trees, fields, materials, signs,
uses their characteristics and relations; the very first lines of the first page of his Prima
lezione di urbanistica list these elements. This way, attention was given to ordinary objects,
abandoning traditional grammar and syntax of description, in order to start a new
understanding of the urban.
Secchi used to say that this method emerged also in reaction to a drift of the 1970s, when the
hegemonic role of sociology and economics in city planning resulted in a detachment from
physical reality; a renewal of content and methods was therefore necessary. In the 1990s each
city plan developed by his equipe (team), the plan for Prato particularly, started with the
rilievo of the whole municipality and its representation on boards at the scale of 1:2000. This
inventory showed the not sequential, non-hierarchical character of the contemporary city and
its often-fragmented random paratactic layout. In design, this method produced taxonomies
and matrices and their collage, abandoning generalizing categories for a new urban
palimpsest.
Studio Secchi Vigan, Antwerp Plan
Studio Secchi Vigan, Antwerp Plan
CB/GA: In conclusion, albeit being explicitly interested pre-eminently in European urban
territories, Secchi visited[26] South American megacities like So Paulo and Rio on several
occasions, giving lectures and interviews and participating in conferences, tackling topics of
informality, vulnerable areas and urbanization of favelas. From your understanding, did those
urban realities inform his thinking and influence his projects? In other words, did he find
similar urban questions?
PP: I think that the new urban question was greatly influenced by his recent familiarity with
South American megacities, which he considered to be of great relevance. He tutored some
interesting Ph.D. theses focused on inclusion-exclusion dynamics, the requests of urban space
by the consuming middle class, the influence of catholic culture and politics on the realization
of contemporary settlements in South American cities.
Also Asian and Russian megacities were very influential in his reasoning. The effort was often
to make comparisons between well-known urban realities and new ones; fully aware of the
different urban histories and models, he tried to produce generalization efforts to prevent the
risk of being captured by the specificity of single situations.
CB/GA: Building on Paolas last reply, it is worth recalling that we increasingly live in a world
of cities where cities are shaped by processes that stretch well beyond their physical

extent, as Robinson puts it[27]. As a result, it is possible to produce those generalisation

efforts that Paola mentioned, to radically de-territorialize the urban, to have global
conversations on the aspects of contemporary urban life and to formulate travelling theories,
as Edward Said advised us. It does appear tautological that the urban epicentre from which to
explore urban theory is no longer located exclusively in the so called Global North, Europe or
US, but in a much more fertile arena that results in the comparison as learning[28], a multidirectional learning that might happen across different contexts, overcoming the impasse of
the pioneering studies that were only focused on Western cities. Lagos is not catching up
with us. Rather, we may be catching up with Lagos[29]. The lesson of Bernardo Secchi can
therefore open new research directions towards a new urban question able to stimulate
intellectual and practical investigation in cities that are embedded in multiple
elsewheres[30].
Paola Pellegrini is Lecturer of Urban Design at IUAV of Venice and the Politecnico di Milano. She
was Visiting Associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, MASS, and Research
Associate at the Department of Urbanism at IUAV of Venice with prof. Bernardo Secchi. Her
research mainly focuses on spatial analysis and theory of city planning design tools in
particular the scenario construction both as a cognitive practice and proper urban planning
tool, planning proposals for tackling sprawling metropolitan areas, new concepts for
infrastructure and urban heritage.
Always combining academic research and professional practice, Paola collaborated with the
Secchi-Vigan Studio in Milan to the Pesaro city plan, the Strategic Plan for Antwerp and the
Grand Pari of Paris; most recently she develops cross-border and transnational cooperation
projects funded by the European Community for transport infrastructures development and
cultural heritage conservation.
Camillo Boano is an architect, urbanist and educator. He is Senior Lecturer at The Bartlett
Development Planning Unit, University College of London (UCL), where he directs the MSc in
Building and Urban Design in Development. He is also co-director of the UCL Urban
Laboratory. Camillo has over 20 years of experiences in research, design consultancies and
development work in South America, Middle East, Eastern Europe and South East Asia. His
research interests revolve around the encounters between critical theory, radical philosophy
with urban and architectural design processes where collective agency and politics encounters
urban narratives and aesthetics, especially those emerging in informal and contested
urbanisms.
Giovanna Astolfos background is in architecture and urban design; she graduated at IUAV,
School of Architecture in Venice and holds a PhD at University of Udine. Her research focused
on the nexus between density, proximity, re-use of vacant land and sustainable development
of medium sized cities in Southern Europe. More recently her research is focused on urban
borders, division and its production in the global everyday. Giovanna combined academic
research and professional practice, working in architectural offices in Venice and So Paulo, on
international projects and competitions for the recovery and reuse of existing buildings and
urban regeneration, infrastructural projects and environmental plans. She is currently
Teaching Fellow and alumna of The Bartlett DPU (UCL).

[1]Secchi, B., Vigan, P., (2009) Antwerp, territory of a new modernity, SUN architecture

[2]Grand Pari(s), Paris, France. Consultation of research on the future of great Paris
metropolitan area. Client: Ministre de la Culture et de la Communication de la Rpublique
Franaise. See also: http://www.b-ondstudio.com/?portfolio=grand-paris-paris-france-studio-bsecchi-p-vigano and http://www.ateliergrandparis.fr/index.php
[3](1984) Il racconto urbanistico, Einaudi, Torino; (2000) Prima lezione di urbanistica, Laterza,
Roma-Bari; (2005) La citt del XX secolo, Laterza, Roma-Bari; (2012) La citt dei ricchi e dei
poveri, Laterza, Roma-Bari
[4](2012) La citt dei ricchi e dei poveri, Laterza, Roma-Bari, p. 22 (translations by authors)
[5]Secchi, B., (2006), The rich and the poor, comment vivre (ou ne pas vivre) ensemble. In:
Vigan, P., Pellegrini, P. (2006) Comment vivre ensemble, Officina (original in English), p.373382
[6]Pellegrini, P. (2012) Prossimit. Declinazioni di una questione urbana, Mimesis, Udine-Milano
[7]Secchi, B. (2005) La citt del XX secolo, Laterza, Roma-Bari
[8]See also: http://www.planum.net/welfare
[9]Secchi, B. (2006) The rich and the poor, comment vivre (ou ne pas vivre) ensemble. In:
Vigan, P., Pellegrini, P. (2006) Comment vivre ensemble, Officina (original in English), p.376
[10]Barthes, R. (2002) Comment vivre ensemble. Cours et seminaires au College de France
1976-77, Seuil Imec, Paris
[11]Webber, M. (1963) Order in Diversity: Community Without Propinquity. In: Wingo, L. (1963)
Cities and Space: The Future Use of Urban Land, pp. 23-54, Johns Hopkins University Press.
[12]Pavillonnaire is the low density settlement in the periphery of mainly single family houses
with garden.
[13]Secchi, B. (2012) La citt dei ricchi e dei poveri, Laterza, Roma-Bari; Secchi B., (2010) A
new urban question. Understanding and planning the contemporary European city. Territorio,
53
[14]Bourdieu, P. (1984 [1979]) Distinction. A social critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard
University Press
[15]Secchi, B. (2012) La citt dei ricchi e dei poveri, Laterza, Roma-Bari, p. 6
[16]Bourdieu, P. (1993) La misere du monde, Seuil, Paris
[17] Urbanism has strong and specific responsibilities in the worsening of inequalities
Secchi, B., (2012) La citt dei ricchi e dei poveri, ibidem (translation by authors)
[18]Secchi, B. (2006), The rich and the poor, comment vivre (ou ne pas vivre) ensemble. In:
Vigan, P., Pellegrini, P. (2006) Comment vivre ensemble, Officina (original in English), p.374

[19] Fini, G., Pezzoni N. (2011) Il Piano Strutturale di Anversa. Un nuovo dispositivo di
convivenza per la citt contemporanea. Intervista a Bernardo Secchi e Paola Vigan,
Urbanistica, 148
[20]Secchi, B. (2006), The rich and the poor, comment vivre (ou ne pas vivre) ensemble. In:
Vigan, P., Pellegrini, P. (2006) Comment vivre ensemble, Officina (original in English), p.380
[21]Rich not only denotes persons, families, groups that have a high income and/or
conspicuous assets. The term rich is also used to define persons of a consistent cultural or
social capital, with an extensive network of relation amongst the dominant groups of the
society, that confer a status and often an income that is equivalent to or above that of
persons with high income capital. Secchi, B., (2006), The rich and the poor, comment vivre
(ou ne pas vivre) ensemble. In: Vigan, P., Pellegrini, P. (2006) Comment vivre ensemble,
Officina (original in English), p.373
[22]B.Secchi, original in English http://www.planum.net/these-words
[23]See also: http://www.planum.net/these-words
[24]Corboz, A. (1983) The Land as Palimpsest, Diogenes 31 (121):12-34
[25] Translation by the authors
[26]Conference Cidade informal no Seculo XXI, 12 April 2010, So Paulo, Museu da Casa
Brasileira; Conference Arquitetura, Cidade, Metrpole Democratizar Cidades Sustentveis,
27 February-1 March 2013, IAB (Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil), Rio de Janeiro
[27]Robinson, J. (2014) New geographies of theorising the urban: Putting comparison to work
for global urban studies. In Parnell, S., Oldfield, S., (2014) The Routledge handbook on cities of
the Global South, Routledge
[28]McFarlane, C. (2010). The comparative city: knowledge, learning, urbanism. International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research 34(4): 725742
[29] Rem Koolhaas postulation in the film Lagos Wide & Close. An interactive Journey into an
Exploding City, Netherlands 2005, Directed by Bregtje Van der Haak (120 min)
[30] Mbembe A., Nuttall, S. (2004) Writing the World from an African Metropolis. Public Culture,
16(3): 347-372