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1. The analysis of the ways in which global changes and local impacts are conceptualized and of the methods of empirical investigation
 

All research projects in which the partners are or have been involved – implicitly or explicitly – refer to the local-global link, considering cities as social formations, both spatially and socially, with peculiar economic and cultural histories, which give rise to specific local systems. These local systems have peculiar social morphologies which are a result of their being part of a complex network of relations at different levels – from the local to the global – reacting in peculiar ways to exogenous and endogenous phenomena (constraints) and producing different impacts (e.g. in terms of vulnerability, poverty, ways of perceiving and addressing changes through innovative or traditional forms of governance, …).
 

Within this frame, main objectives of this area of research are:
 

1. to identify the terminology and the narratives used by the different disciplines to define the ongoing processes and to link different terms with the same meanings and articulate same terms used with different meanings;

2. to disentangle the local-global link into its analytical dimensions as they have been treated by the different disciplines, theories, methods,…adopted within the recent and ongoing comparative research projects on urban Europe.

3. to reach (on the basis of the recent and ongoing research) a new understanding of the nature of changes in European cities and of how different equilibria among regulating mechanisms (market exchange, redistribution and reciprocity) may affect specific inclusion and exclusion processes and governance impacts.

4. to provide the different areas of analysis (see below) with a conceptual, theoretical and methodological sound basis to build upon and further develop their research and training activities.

5. to identify the specific European features of the processes considered.

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Last modified: 10/21/05