L’articolo si struttura in tre parti. Inizialmente definisce una serie di riquadri per delineare lo sfondo morfo-genetico del prendere forma e affermarsi del capitalismo infrastrutturale e di piattaforma. In secondo luogo, si presentano le caratteristiche attuali di piattaforme e infrastrutture, la loro articolazione reciproca e la relazione con una costellazione di altri poteri. Il terzo passaggio discute i termini attraverso cui il potere descritto dalla convergenza tra “piattaformizzazione delle infrastrutture” e “infrastrutturazione delle piattaforme” definisce forme inedite rispetto al passato avanzando (...) tre proposte di analisi: la necessità di “superare” la codificazione del “potere infrastrutturale”, l’emersione del “potere algoritmico” e la sua natura “duale”. (shrink)

We interviewed Galileo Morandi, a young Italian architect working in a research project on architecture and new technologies and author of several publications about the relation between city, territory and project. The discussion starts and finishes in a place where Morandi studied and worked, Dubai – example of a city in rapid growth and in its way iconic representation of the new globalized cities – passing through Milan and Los Angeles, the new Chinese town and a village in the mountains. (...) The role played by city plans allows to discuss the contemporary city between an architectural perspective and a political awareness. The result is a first partial experiment to connect different urban perspectives. (shrink)

During the Twentieth century, Tocqueville has been presented as the «oracle» of democracy, shown by him in De la Démocratie en Amérique as a system shaped up by the constant pressure of the égalité's principle. In recent years, however, a new image of this author is presented by many scholars, following above all the analysis of his writings on the Algerian colonization. Commonly interpreted as marginal, this section of Tocqueville's theoretical work is instead discussed here as a tool to redefine (...) his pivotal concepts of equality and democracy. The article is developed discarding an interpretation of Algerian production as, alternatively, Tocqueville's exception or his truth. It is otherwise presented here within the twine of his complex theoretical fabric. (shrink)

We present here the original translation of an article published in 1989 by Henri Lefebvre on Le Monde Diplomatique. A short but extremely dense piece, where Lefebvre's vision finds a synthesis and the premises for its overcoming at the same time. The introduction to the article historically frames Lefebvre's work, showing the genesis of this article and discussing some of its main topics. Furthermore, the introduction critically analizes the contemporary Lefebvre's reinassance and proposes some interpretations for a contemporary translation of (...) the most important topics addressed by Quand la ville se perd dans la métamorphose planétaire. (shrink)

Within the entering in the global era, the city is come back again as a strategic architrave of the world's infrastructure – while the State, the historical figure through which Modernity was organized, has been declared in crisis long time ago. Despite the broad spectrum of urban reflections, there still is a deep lack of political theory of the city. The globalization of the city – within the pathway of the planetary urbanization – is the object of the article, that (...) elaborates on a twofold level: on one hand, a genealogical trace of that process is proposed – articulating it by distilling urban political thought from different authors and historical episodes; on the other hand, the article suggests a theoretical and methodological horizon through which to grasp the contemporary global transitions, labelled as “seeing like a city”. (shrink)