“The Urban Re-Scaling. Questions of Representation”

The instauration of a worldwide urban condition has gone together with a deep innovation in the mapping and data techniques of representation in the last two decades. The paper focuses on the relations between these two sets from the point of view of the urban planner and designer. The method of handling these topics starts from elementary research operations, such as collecting and comparing a series of representations, drawings, diagrams, and schemes about regional patterns of urbanization in European territories. The research of the scale of observation is not supported by the apparent realism of the aerial photographs and highlights the need of a new urban theory to describe the new, large, informational, discontinuous and topological nature of urban patterns. The municipal and local scales remain active, and work together at a regional, transregional and global scale. The observation of re-scaling in contemporary urban phenomena leads to the research of the criteria of a new urbanity hiding behind the uncontrolled proliferations of urban shapes, dimensions, experiences. Perhaps, it may be found in a kind of “minimum urbanization”, linked to the essential facilities: electricity, water, phone, web and bank connection. The aim of the operation would describe the cities and territories’ structures and their potentials, able to build a shared base for national and European policies.