The rationale behind this piece of research is to study the movement of people from
Bologna city centre to its outskirts and to find out what type of people are subject to move
and the reasons for this: are they forced into or do they choose to do so?
The present study will also consider how people commute from home to the city centre
and the effect this has on them. For the purpose of this work, attention will be drawn to the
possibility of these outer areas to develop in such a way that people will no longer need to
commute to the city in order to recreate the advantages this offers to them (e.g. shops, job
opportunities, ext). The theoretical framework this doctorial work is based upon concerns
historical, urbanist, sociological and demographic approaches, along with the fact that the
hegemony of the city centre has been benefiting has decreased. Historical centres and the
central poles of metropolitan systems have lost their functional and symbolic relevance.
More specifically, the Bologna Area is undergoing two tendencies: the first one is a
process of residential decentralization from the capital town, capable of involving a plurality
of social groups, which caused an enrichment of the social composition of "suburban"
population. The second process is a partial substitution of the population in the city centre
with new groups: this not only occurred with directional groups, but it has also interested
new parts of the “service worker” class and members of metropolitan underclass, causing,
consequentially, a growing complexity in central areas of the metropolitan system. The
need to increase knowledge of Bologna territory has become more and more relevant,
since the 70’s, when a series of important environmental transformations favoured a
research interest that did not exclusively stopped within the city centre boarders, but rather
encouraged the exploration of Bologna outer/suburban areas. Finally, in the
urban/suburban discourse, this piece of research has highlighted how the search for a
better quality of life (financial reasons, larger spaces, possibility to buy/rent for a better
price, environmental issues) determines the choice to leave the centre of the city in favour
of outer areas. The tendency that this doctorial work has brought to surface is the need to
match a more manageable standard of living to the proximity to the city, despite the fact
that this results in the stress caused to commuting and the lack of those cultural and
entertaining facilities offered by the city. The new suburban inhabitants do not regret
leaving the city, but, at the same time, do not feel emotionally attached to the new location
at a community level: what they seem to look for is a more comfortable environment where
to live in.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:unibo.it/oai:amsdottorato.cib.unibo.it:1094 |
| Date | 21 May 2008 |
| Creators | Baldini, Monica <1976> |
| Contributors | Pieretti, Giovanni |
| Publisher | Alma Mater Studiorum - Università di Bologna |
| Source Sets | Università di Bologna |
| Language | Italian |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Doctoral Thesis, PeerReviewed |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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