7 February 2012
Dominique Lorrain
How cities work:a question that has become central in both industrialised and emerging countries
How cities work governs the economic performance and well-being of their inhabitants; political democracy and good relations between people play an important role. More even than in the past, big cities function like gigantic switches which intermix populations and structure the exchange of goods and services.All this makes the need to understand all the more acute.
The development of a social science perspective on technical questions.The material city can be described as a technical meta-system composed of multiple bricks, but their design, arrangement and funding are not dictated by natural laws.
The study of new experiments underway in emerging countries which are still little understood.
Big corporations and their growing role in “making the city”. Public policies as the sociology of organisations initially focused on the State and big public institutions. Economists, with their picture of optimum market exchange, tended to represent corporations as “point” players without thickness. Our aim is to include research on urban corporations as one more kind of distinctive social science object.
The development of cities is inseparable from that of technical networks, structured on a common model:the single network, a web-shaped monopoly seeking to provide a universal service.
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