.| Research project The CNR - Agenzia 2000 research project "Territorial Transformations and Impacts on Society - the New Culture of Cities", coordinated by Elio Piroddi, full professor in Town Planning at 'La Sapienza' University of Rome, and ex member of the Committee for Engineering and Architectural Sciences of CNR, is within the general overall framework for research activity for The Study and Research Centre, "The Future of the City". This project represents the ideal follow-up to the previous CNR Strategic Project, "The Future of the City: Background and Scenarios". In the Strategic Project, coordinated by Elio Piroddi and in the activities of the Study and Research Centre directed by him, some of the most respected Italian experts in multi-disciplinary urban studies have participated, including M. Callari Galli, P. Colarossi, M. De Luca, G. Dematteis, G. O. Longo, F. Indovina, A. Magnaghi, G. Martinotti, E. Scandurra, B. Secchi. In December 1998, within the framework of the Strategic Project, a meeting on "The Future of the City: Changes, New Subjects and Projects" was held in Cortona. Over 200 academics participated in the meeting and over 40 reports were presented by teachers and researchers from universities from all over Italy. The reports were collected into a volume of the same name (edited by E. Piroddi, E. Scandurra and L. DeBonis) and published by Angeli in 2000. The six main presentations from the meeting were collected together in a volume "I Futuri della cittą. Tesi a confronto", by G. Dematteis, F. Indovina, A. Magnaghi, E. Piroddi, E. Scandurra, B. Secchi, published by the same publisher in 1999. The research project "The New Culture of Cities", the title reminding us of Mumford's famous work, proposes a type of rewriting, using the results of the Strategic Project and putting them on an international level, aiming at encouraging the on-going working out of a new city culture within the framework of worldwide phenomena. The research has looked at the issues relative to the reciprocal interaction between the territory and society, analysing the main factors in the transformation of territorial culture, such as cultural pluralism, the transition from modernity to contemporaniety, the new ways of living and making use of time and urban space, the technological innovations in transportation and communications and the relation between the city and the territorial ecosystem. The research particularly compares what can be considered the core of the Mumfordian thinking - that the city, apart from the specific historical variations, remains one of the main expressions of human civilization - with the factors (globalization, de-localization, virtualization, and the repercussions of technology on biology) which bring into discussion the importance and value of physical space and spatial proximity, as a means for interaction among human beings.
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