The Urban Contract: Community, Governance and Capitalism

Today, the increasing mobility of capital, people and information has changed the space relations of urban societies. Contractual relations have increased in every field of social life: in the economic field, but also in the political, and in creative and scientific areas. Contracts are not only legal frameworks or economic aggregates of individuals, but socially embedded forms.The concept of urban contract proposed in this book combines the theoretical body of economic-juridical literature on the contract with that of historical-anthropological and socio-spatial literature on the city. Through a diverse range of ten city case studies, The Urban Contract compares European, North-American and Asian Urban Contracts. It concludes with a theoretical proposal for understanding the deep dialectical nature of Contract Cities: their reciprocity and competition, their dual trend towards growth and decay, their cyclical nature as agents of change and disruption of the social forms of urbanity.

About the Author

Paolo Perulli is full professor of Economic Sociology, University of Eastern Piedmont, Department of Jurisprudence, Political, Economic and Social Sciences (Italy), and professor of Urban Sociology, Architecture Academy of Mendrisio, (Switzerland). He has been visiting scholar at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning of MIT, Cambridge (Mass.) in 1984-5 and professeur invité at the Facultè Jean Monnet of Université de Paris Sud in 1993-4. His main research topics have included: Metropolitan Atlas (Bologna 1992 and Madrid 1995), Global Networks and Nation-States (Zurich 1999), The City of Networks (Turin 2000), The City: a socio-philosophical lexicon (Mendrisio 2004). His recent books have been published by Einaudi, Il Mulino and Mendrisio Academy Press.