Interrogarsi su capacità adattive e crisi passate in un mondo di nuove sfide / Questioning adaptive factors and past crises in a world of new challenges

How can we define the factors of adaptation and in what way has there been a positive expression or, by contrast, an inability, or even a refusal, of cities to remodel themselves, complying with the deformations imprinted by crises and changes and imposed by circumstances? Natural events or those caused by the human factor, wars, but also policies that have caused traumatic changes: all conditions that originate from different causes but all an essential part of the history of cities and territories. The paper focuses on multiple episodes and studies collected in the book edited by the author that includes 509 studies of 634 contributors that make it possible to verify seemingly comparable situations deployed over a very long time. It also underlines a diversity in developments and choices that leaves many questions open, to which offer some insights with some considerations on the current challenges of urban history and its challenges at the time of the climate change.