Reading and interpreting the gateways in contemporary cities: an educational perspective

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Journal of Research and Didactics in Geography (J-READING), 1, 4, June, 2015, pp. 19-28
DOI: 10.4458/5196-03

    Reading and interpreting the gateways in contemporary
              cities: an educational perspective
Caterina Cirellia, Teresa Grazianob, Enrico Nicosiac, Carmelo Maria Portod
a
  Dipartimento di Economia e Impresa, University of Catania, Catania, Italy
b
  Dipartimento di Scienze Umanistiche e Sociali, University of Sassari, Sassari, Italy
c
  Dipartimento di Scienze della Formazione, dei Beni Culturali e del Turismo, University of Macerata, Macerata,
Italy
d
  Dipartimento di Scienze Cognitive, della Formazione e degli Studi Culturali, University of Messina, Messina,
Italy
Email: cirelca@unict.it

Received: January 2015 – Accepted: March 2015

                                                  Abstract
This work aims at highlighting the teaching potentialities of urban geography, in particular the didactic
value of gateways in contemporary cities. Therefore, after a reflection on the still fundamental
pedagogical value of urban geography and its teaching tools, the paper provides a model of reading and
interpreting the city through the study of connections between tourist flows and consumption models in
specific urban places, that is to say, the traditional city gateways such as railway stations, ports and
airports.

Keywords: Gateway, City, Waterfront, Airports, Railway Stations, Multifunctional Spaces

                                                          into multiple sub-sectors, related to the different
    1. Teaching Urban Geography: the                      aspects of geography, that is to say the
          educational value of the city                   cognitive, educational, methodological, teaching
                   gateways                               and assessing ones (De Vecchis, 2004, 2011).

   The main goal of the didactics of geography                Geography aims at thinking the geographical
is to “translate” for the school, through an              space as a set of territorial systems that have
appropriate scientific processing of results and          their own autonomy and, at the same time, are
outputs achieved by research, so that the objects,        the results of continuous interactions with
methods and aims of the discipline can                    different geographical scales and territorial
participate entirely in the educational-teaching          systems. Thus the territory is seen as the output
project. The task of transmitting the results of          of processes and social relations, by revealing to
research for educational aims is then divided             what extent human life is involved in economic,

Copyright© Nuova Cultura                                                Italian Association of Geography Teachers
20                  Caterina Cirelli, Teresa Graziano, Enrico Nicosia, Carmelo Maria Porto

political and cultural processes.                        and redevelopment projects, the increasing role
                                                         of finance in changing urban structure and the
    It is also regarded as a spatial scale where the
                                                         spatial implications of neo-liberalism.
city gates play an important role within the
relational processes. From the educational point             Apart from the fundamental role played by
of view, the territory highlights the ethical            fieldwork (Fuller et al., 2006; Dunphy et al.,
connotation of geography, since the discipline is        2009), new technologies provide a wide range of
not limited to a detached observation of the             tools (GIS, Google Earth etc.), many of them
territory, but it helps to suggest solutions for its     easily accessible, making it possible to read,
governance through ideas and guidelines, by              interpret and consequently teach the evolution of
indicating the resources and strengths to be             city structure in a more innovative and appealing
leveraged and the challenges to be faced                 way if compared with the traditional models of
(Giorda, 2014, pp. 15-30).                               teaching.
   The use of geographically expressed concepts             Contemporary cities have recently imposed
and paradigms is still one of the most effective         their role as fundamental nodes of wider global
applications in teaching the discipline, since a         networks to the point that their future is
well-conceived model can provide an accessible           increasingly dependent on their capacity to
and holistic perspective about a multifaceted            support the innovative development of urban
issue.                                                   gateways. The presence of a city in a network of
                                                         global relationships is related to the effectiveness
    One of the main fields where geographical
                                                         of urban policies inspired by creativity and
models and interpretation tools are usually
                                                         innovation that enable cities – not necessarily of a
exploited is the analysis of urban evolution,
                                                         higher order – to carve out a leading role in the
since the city structure, even though made even
                                                         scenery of international relations (Short et al.,
more complicated by current transformations at
                                                         2000).
global level, can be easily read and interpreted
through deeply-established geographical models.              As a result, the future of the contemporary
Ranging from well-known traditional models               city is increasingly dependent on the ability to
(Kearsley, 1983; Corna Pellegrini, 2007) to the          establish itself as a gateway city, regarded not
most recent and innovative ones, the study of the        only as a space shaped by the processes of
city evolution today represents one of the most          cultural, political and economic globalization,
appealing geographical fields due to the                 but also as a place where traditional access
fascination it exerts on students of different           points (airports, ports, railway stations, roads)
levels as well as its capacity to represent the          contribute to shape the hierarchy of functions in
complexity of current global changes.                    a context of growing global competition.
    Since the sixties (age of astonishing                    Not surprisingly, one of the areas where the
transformations of urban structures), urban              extent of current changes is ever more evident is
geography has been regarded as “the most                 the structure of transports and, consequently, the
important and rapidly expanding focus” of the            patterns of spatial organization that affect the
geographical research, since many geographical           performance of the cities in which there are
schools had already understood “the fundamental          terminals (Ahmed and Miller, 2007),
educational value of urban geography as a subject        determining the rank in the urban hierarchy at
which introduces pupils to basic geographical            the regional, national or international level
principles in terms of the most familiar                 (Rodrigue et al., 2006).
environments”(Keeble, 1969, p. 18).
                                                             Main international cities, such as the gateway
   Today, the vitality of urban geographical             cities, operate together as a single network
research, both at the theoretical and                    system linked to flows of information, capital,
methodological level, reflects the unprecedented         new technologies, cultural and ideological
patterns and practices of contemporary cities            influences. They not only play a role of modal
deriving from dynamics such as the effects of            interchange that allows an easy passage of
urban sprawl, the consequences of regeneration           travelers from one kind of transport to another,

Copyright© Nuova Cultura                                                Italian Association of Geography Teachers
Caterina Cirelli, Teresa Graziano, Enrico Nicosia, Carmelo Maria Porto                    21

but rather they principally represent the core of        centuries due to the process of industrialization
the modern network city and are, at the same             (Vallega, 1992).
time, symbols of urban and territorial identity
                                                             During the eighties, in fact, after the case
(Dematteis, 1991; Dupuy, 1991).
                                                         study of Baltimore reported in an article by
    As a consequence, current economic structures        Wrenn (1983), the theoretical frame was focused
of contemporary cities are shaping new urban             on a series of contributions dedicated to the
spaces, where the national and international             transformations of urban waterfront, such as that
infrastructures of transports have not only to assure    of the French geographer Chaline (1988) who
connection efficiency, but also to reorganize the        analyzed the London case. The English
functional hierarchies in order to promote tourism       geographer Hoyle (1988) proposed a space-time
development (Rodrigue et al., 2006).                     model of the dynamics of the port-city relations
                                                         organized in five stages (Hoyle et al., 1988) that
    Moreover, recent projects of urban
                                                         explained the evolution of port cities from the
regeneration have been revealing unexpected
                                                         Middle Ages (primitive Cityport) to the present
potentialities of enhancement of such city
                                                         day (the stage of expanding port between
gateways, due to the increasing presence of
                                                         eighteenth and nineteenth century, the modern
leisure and retail facilities within these places,
                                                         industrial Cityport and Maritime Industrial
which contribute to building the first tourist
                                                         Development Areas “MIDs”). During this
image of a city.
                                                         evolution the port is increasingly far from the
                                                         city centre, due to the need for new spaces
                                                         which are less dependent on the competition
     2. Waterfront and tourism, new
                                                         with other land uses (Soriani, 1998).
   potentialities of urban revitalisation
                                                            The beginning of the process of de-
   Ports and waterfronts have been recently              industrialization determined the final separation
become among the most studied sub-fields of the          of roles between city and port, despite the
geography, due to their strategic importance             progressive expansion of Brownfield sites in the
within global economic and urban networks.               surroundings of the old port areas. However, this
They thus represent a highly attractive field from       will be the driving force for the functional
the pedagogical point of view.                           redevelopment of many waterfront areas which
   Ports are among the oldest urban structures           rediscover a new level of relations at the
dedicated to the exchange of people and goods,           expense of traditional port activities.
as well as the meeting places for different                 Thus, the contemporary port-city should be
cultures, perhaps the oldest examples of urban           able to interpret the waterfront as a complex
laboratory of cultural mediation.                        system, apart from considering it as a network of
   The first theories about the processes of             “geo-communities”, that is to say a specific
functional redevelopment of coastal areas date           complex of innovative milieus.
back to the sixties of the last century when the             The re-appropriation of the highly original
English geographer J. Bird considered the                waterfronts of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and
proximity of the sea as a factor of urban and            Hamburg is not only a good example of port
suburban polarization. He proposed a model,              reorganization that allows the enhancement and
called Anyport, to explain the dynamics in the           reorganization of public spaces, but it also
process of development of the main ports of              underlines the ability of these urban communities
northern Europe, with particular reference to            to question the old functional system, in order to
those located within estuaries, as in the case of        imagine new driving forces of the urban economy.
London (Soriani, 1998).                                  The balance between old and new functions can
   Only at the end of the seventies Vigarié              promote the revitalization of the city centre, as
(1979) underlined the horizontal relations               happened in the London Docklands where the
between ports and coastal areas, to explain the          project has been characterized by the association of
growing separation between city and port                 two images of the city, the one linked to the water
activities in the nineteenth and twentieth               activities and the other linked to the new urban

Copyright© Nuova Cultura                                                Italian Association of Geography Teachers
22                  Caterina Cirelli, Teresa Graziano, Enrico Nicosia, Carmelo Maria Porto

tertiary and quaternary economies at the core of             3. Railway stations as contemporary
the global city.                                                           leisure places
   During the Olympic Games in 1992 Port Vell               Within the wide sub-field of urban geography
in Barcelona was transformed into a huge new             and geography of transports, railway stations
“public space” where pedestrians, leisure and            have always represented a good example of the
extravagant architectural forms are the tangible         ability to attract geography students of different
signs of the renewal undertaken, by involving            levels, due to their capacity to fascinate.
the whole metropolitan area (Nicosia, 2009;
Rocca, 2010). Interventions would then be                    Railway stations have been changing their
carried out on the waterfronts of Lisbon and             aims, functions and relationship with the
Genoa to host international major events as – in         surrounding urban fabric. Regarded as places to
some cases the only ones – potential tools of            intercept flows of people and goods, as well as
urban regeneration which may exert a positive            public places of connection between the rail
impact on the capacity of local governance.              system and the city, railway stations have a dual
                                                         nature: the infrastructure that belongs to the
    While the experiences of Bilbao and                  local system and the functional specialized
Liverpool show how the city can still have the           space.
ability to challenge the economic decline of the
post-industrial city, the Harbour Place in                  Since the second half of the nineteen century,
Baltimore and the whole South Street Sea-port            the architecture of railway stations has tended to
of New York clearly show the “spectacle” of the          combine the meaning of a new gate of the city
interventions as symbols of post-modernity               and technological progress. More frequently
(Harvey, 1993).                                          abroad than in Italy, the façades of the stations
                                                         are dominated by a tower, sometimes as a
   We should also remember the case of Dubai,            functional element for monitoring the line, more
where the coastal projects seem to indicate the          often as a symbol of the building. This is the
culmination of difficult and complex research on         case of the Prague Main Train Station, with its
the new dimensions of the 21st century city.             facade in Art Nouveau style (Ventura, 2004) and
   Beyond the already described experiences,             the Grand Central Station (more precisely
European and Mediterranean cities should aim at          Terminal) in New York, which opened in 1871,
achieving a clever interpretation of existing            and today a multi-functional and global space
urban spaces in the process of the recreation of         both of transit and leisure, with its several
new urban waterfronts, by trying to enhance the          restaurants (the most famous of which is the
sense of place.                                          Oyster Bar) and fast food, as well as delis,
                                                         bakeries, newsstands, a food market, a location
    Therefore, the processes of redevelopment of         of the New York Transit Museum, and more
the waterfront, despite being the result of              than forty retail spaces.
different models of development, share the same
theoretical principle, based on an evolution of              In the nineteenth century, moreover, the
the contemporary city far from conventional              railway stations were built for major events such
patterns. The model of development should be             as the World Expositions. This is the case of
smart, competitive, cohesive and sustainable, as         Victoria Station, built for the Great Exhibition of
warmly recommended also in the Territorial               1851, which was when the railway line to the
Agenda of the EU (2011).                                 West End of London and Crystal Palace Railway
                                                         were created, and the Gare de Lyon in Paris,
   Fieldwork in port areas, in cities of different       built for the Universal Exhibition of 1900. At the
dimensions and functions, can represent a useful         end of the century a prevailing language of
tool for students to understand not only the             classical architecture, adopted mainly in French
current changes in waterfront areas but also             stations, such as the Paris St Lazare, North, East,
wider transformations that have been affecting           Lyon, Montparnasse, Orsay, and later even in
the whole economic system at global level.               Budapest, Zurich and Dresden. The railway line
                                                         style is even typical of the great American

Copyright© Nuova Cultura                                                Italian Association of Geography Teachers
Caterina Cirelli, Teresa Graziano, Enrico Nicosia, Carmelo Maria Porto                    23

stations, such as the Union Station in Washington          In contemporary cities, travelers are at the
and revised in some cases in Italy, such as in the      centre of the new concept of the railway station.
Milan Centrale which is inspired by Assyrian-           Commuters, tourists, users of the services in
Babylonian styles. In other circumstances, the          general ask for mobility needs to be satisfied
railway line, which has become non-competitive,         with high quality services, but they also want to
was gradually abandoned.                                find social spaces where to meet and spend their
                                                        free time in places that allow different
    Today, many of the main railway stations of
                                                        sociability, which enhance and strengthen the
the past have been dismantled and redeveloped
                                                        local identity (Camasso, 2010; Ingallina, 2010;
to assure the rationalization of the network. This
                                                        Nicosia, 2013).
is the case of the Penn Station in New York
City, demolished to support a redevelopment                 The newly-built railway stations, techno-
project that has implied the covering of the            logically advanced, are also cleverly conceived
tracks and the realization of Madison Square            in terms of appearance and design. The new
Garden. Another example is the Gare d’Orsay in          spaces are designed for multiple uses and
Paris, abandoned for demolition in the seventies,       functions and their spaces are designed to be
later declared a national monument and then             comfortable both for those who have to take a
converted into a museum.                                train and for those who simply want to buy a
                                                        newspaper or have a cup of coffee. An example
   Moreover, we should remember the
                                                        of redevelopment of European railway stations
Promenade Plantée of Paris, a linear urban park
                                                        is that one of Almere, a Dutch town, where the
located on the track of an old abandoned
                                                        train station has become a town square from
elevated rail line (ligne de Vincennes) which
                                                        which you can observe the passage of trains
extends for more than 4 km from the Place de la
                                                        from a window; another example is Basel, where
Bastille.
                                                        a shopping mall has been built in the railway
    These great architectural works, that have          station and finally Dortmund and Lucerne where
become       fundamental      axes      of    urban     cultural centers have been built near the railway
development, have often been used by many               stations (Pini and Boschi, 2004).
directors as locations for their films (de Spuches,
                                                            Today, even in Italy, the new organizational
2002), so that they can be used as a useful
                                                        structure of the railway stations aims to expand,
teaching aid to show real examples in the
                                                        reshape and replace the spaces for passengers’
classroom. Films and television are useful tools
                                                        facilities. The Italian Railway Infrastructure
for teaching geography since they provide a
                                                        Company of the State Railways Group has
great deal of information useful for the
                                                        elaborated several redevelopment projects, in
understanding of the world. The analysis of a
                                                        order to reinvent the public space of the railway
film, through an interpretive key of geographical
                                                        stations by transforming them into “urban
matrix, can play a significant role in the teaching
                                                        plazas” (Ministero delle Infrastrutture, 2007).
plan (De Vecchis, 2011).
                                                            While the nineteenth century railway station
   Among the different movies, we can mention
                                                        traditionally fostered urban development,
Signori in Carrozza! (1951) by Luigi Zampa,
                                                        generating new ways of connection or
Stazione Termini (1953) by Vittorio De Sica,
                                                        redevelopment, nowadays the railway station is
North by Northwest (1959) by Alfred Hitchcock,
                                                        strictly linked to the development of areas
Murder on the Orient Express (1974), directed
                                                        devoted to the tertiary, so that they embody one
by Sidney Lumet, based on the novel by Agatha
                                                        of the first retail and leisure spaces of the
Christie, Train de vie (1998) by Radu
                                                        gateway city.
Mihăileanu, Men in black (I and II 1997 2002)
by Barry Sonnenfeld, Before Sunset (2004) by
Richard Linklater, some sequences of which
were shot along the Promenade Plantée and the
recent Midnight in Paris (2011) by Woody
Allen.

Copyright© Nuova Cultura                                               Italian Association of Geography Teachers
24                  Caterina Cirelli, Teresa Graziano, Enrico Nicosia, Carmelo Maria Porto

     4. Airports as multifunctional spaces               analysis of the impact of air traffic and airport
                                                         infrastructures is one of the most dynamic areas
    Due to the current changes at global and local       of research, which focuses primarily on concepts
level, teaching geography in the postmodern age          such as connectivity, accessibility, model
implies a holistic approach that takes into account      development at different scales and the
the complexity of transformations (Morgan,               implications of the global economy (Graham,
2002). A highly interesting subject from the             1995; Vowles, 2006; Shaw and Hesse, 2010).
pedagogical standpoint is the role of modern
airports in reconfiguring interconnections within            The ability of an airport node to act as a
city systems as well as providing unprecedented          cohesive territorial element is particularly evident
patterns of the use of urban and suburban spaces.        in the case of the Airport System, a system of
                                                         airports of different sizes and functions making
    Although located near the urban belt, at a           up an integrated infrastructure in a large
certain distance from metropolitan centres, the          metropolitan area. The London airports, which
airport has a significant influence on the               include London Heathrow, London Stansted,
surrounding socio-economic area as well as on            London Gatwick, London Southend and London
the nearby city, linked together through a network       City, is an example.
of more or less integrated infrastructures and
connections.                                                While these great Airport Systems are usually
                                                         located in already very dense areas in terms of
    Today the airport plays the same role of             economic, political and social structures, on the
reconfiguration of the socio-economic structures         other hand even a single airport located close to a
in the urban landscapes that was already played          medium-sized city is able to exert significant
by the railway stations at the time of the first         impact in terms of urbanization, patterns of
Industrial Revolution (Güller and Güller, 2001).         spatial organization, employment implications
What is more, it acts as a magnet for local              and functional hierarchies (O’Connor and
economy by linking the global network of                 Fuelhart, 2012).
interconnections and urban hierarchies. In
addition to influencing existing settlements,                The performance of efficiency and
changing ranks and functions in the hierarchy of         accessibility guaranteed by air transport, in fact,
urban nodes, an air terminal can establish itself        represents a competitive advantage not only for
as a player of urban development (Dematteis,             the global cities (Sassen, 2010), but also for
1996). It also nourishes hybrid forms of                 settlements of smaller size and rank that thanks
urbanization close to main agglomerations, by            to the presence of an airport can establish
creating urban sprawl which connects semi-rural          themselves as gateway cities at a national or
urbanized areas located between the existing             international level (Short et al., 2000; Geurs and
settlements.                                             van Wee, 2004; Ahmed and Miller, 2007).
                                                         Thanks to an airport, these cities can also enable
    There are five categories of impacts linked to       innovative processes for development, linked to
the economic activities of the airport, which            knowledge economy, typical of the smart city or
interact with each other: the direct impact, which       the creative city (Florida, 2005).
includes activities related to the air transport of
goods and people inside the airport; the indirect           It is by no accident that the geography of the
impact, or activities outside the airport, but           contemporary air system reflects the current
destined to users; the induced impact, determined        geo-economic scenery. In addition to the
by the multiplicative effects of the previous            development of regional hubs in Southeast Asia
categories; the catalytic impact, which identifies       – Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok (O’Connor,
the airport as a catalyst for investment, resulting      1995) – countries with “emerging” economies
in employment, income and tax revenues; the              such as India, China or Brazil have understood
overall impact, or the sum of all previous               the need for integration in the airline system as a
categories.                                              prerequisite to intercept global flows of capital,
                                                         goods, people and information (Hooper, 1998;
   Due to the growing importance of global               Bowen, 2000; Jin, Wang and Liu, 2004).
airports, even in the geography of transport the

Copyright© Nuova Cultura                                                Italian Association of Geography Teachers
Caterina Cirelli, Teresa Graziano, Enrico Nicosia, Carmelo Maria Porto                    25

    The airports based on a new concept include         possible to grasp some factors that data do not
a wide range of urban values because of the             underline, that is to say, aesthetic/architectural
proliferation of features and facilities linked to      elements and the organization of leisure and
leisure and retail industries. In the international     service spaces within the airport system.
rankings of the most popular airports chosen by
passengers – but also rewarded by experts –
there are terminals such as those located in Hong                        5. Conclusions
Kong, Singapore and Seoul that, in addition to
the highest levels of accessibility and intermodal          Geography is a discipline that can make a
connections with other transport infrastructures,       significant contribution to addressing current
ensure passengers patterns of consumption and           urban changes on the local and global scale. Its
high-level services. In particular, despite being       teaching can promote a greater awareness of the
one of the largest freight hubs, the airport of         socio-economic and cultural transformation of
Hong Kong, the first in the 2011ranking, boasts         contemporary cities through the development of
several lounge rooms, high-level restaurants,           knowledge, skills and values in students that
golf, 3D cinema, wi-fi, as well as a link to trains     encourage an effective model of interpretation of
to and from the city centre that allows remote          city structure (see also Pasquinelli d’Allegra,
check-in from the railway station. The Singapore        1998; Laneve, 2003; Wellen et al., 2006; De
Changi Airport, the second in 2011, offers              Vecchis, 2004, 2011). In particular, the analysis
passengers the opportunity to benefit from              of gateway functions can provide a different
swimming pools, spas, prayer rooms, roof                model of understanding current urban systems.
gardens and retail arcades. The Seoul Incheon,              The gateway functions do not necessarily
ranked third, has private rooms for resting, free       depend on the status of a global city, but rather
showers, spa, golf, ice-skating, roof garden, as        on the ability to develop innovative urban
well as a museum of Korean culture and open             policies focused on intermodal ways of
spaces for shows and live performances.                 transport. It is especially in urban settlements of
    Thus, such hubs represent the first tourist         higher order that the integrated and systemic
sites of a gateway city, because passengers do          approach in urban planning and transport has
not only pass through them, but they really visit       allowed the “gates” of the city to serve not only
and use them as leisure or retail spaces.               as places of access, but as real multifunctional
                                                        spaces, which have often turned out to be
    As a result, modern airports can no longer be       development potentials, even for tourism
considered as simple interchange nodes, because         (Graham, 2000). In fact, the gateways of the
they are increasingly becoming multifunctional          contemporary cities contribute to building the
citadels of leisure, shopping and services. They        first image of the city, apart from acting as one
are not only simple transit spaces, but they            of the main players of the whole urban economy.
appear as a patchwork of specific micro-spaces
where passengers are entertained, through a                From the strictly didactical perspective, it
wide range of services that join the patterns of        could be interesting to organize a workshop
shopping centers with those related to the leisure      about gateway cities, made up of a first
industry (Adey, 2007), which helps to create the        theoretical stage followed by a tutorial one,
first image – even the tourist one – of the city.       based on the use of new technologies, and
                                                        finally by fieldwork.
   From a pedagogical point of view, the in-
depth study of the impact of an airport can                 First of all, students can compare different
provide useful information about the functional         city systems according to their transport
role of the transport system and the nearby             networks and gateways, both at the global level
urbanized area. The study can be based both on          and the local one, by calculating the centrality
the examination of flows based on official              indexes as well as measuring specialization and
sources (data and statistics) and more innovative       polarization among cities.
educational tools, such as pictures, videos,              The teacher can lead students in making this
websites analysis. Through these tools it is            comparison of different gateway cities by

Copyright© Nuova Cultura                                               Italian Association of Geography Teachers
26                  Caterina Cirelli, Teresa Graziano, Enrico Nicosia, Carmelo Maria Porto

helping them to find shared definitions of urban               P., “GIS open source e risorse on line per la
systems at the different levels as well as                     didattica della geografia”, in Bozzato S.
harmonizing the spatially differentiated data.                 (Ed.), GIS tra natura e tecnologia, Rome,
                                                               Carocci, pp. 85-105.
    Secondly, students can also use new
                                                         5.    Bowen J., “Airline hubs in Southeast Asia:
technologies such as GIS to represent the                      National economic development and nodal
territorial data through an interactive                        accessibility”, Journal of Transport Geo-
cartography (Azzari, Michelacci and Zamperlin,                 graphy, 8, 2000, pp. 25-41.
2010).
                                                         6.    Camasso M., Porte urbane nelle aree della
   Finally, the workshop can be characterized                  contemporaneità. Il ruolo dell’architettura
by final fieldwork in the gateways of some                     nella definizione di un’immagine sospesa
selected cities on the local scale, in order to                tra locale e globale, Rome, Aracne, 2010.
study their main features and to compare them            7.    Chaline C., “La reconversion des espaces
with the already gathered data and theoretical                 fluvio-portuaires dans les grandes métro-
frameworks, as well as highlighting their                      poles”, Annales de Géographie, 544, 1988,
functions within a wider network nodal system.                 pp. 695-715.
                                                         8.    Corna Pellegrini G., Geografia diversa e
    As a result, the students’ subjective look at              preziosa. Il pensiero geografico in altri
the gateway functions can be a useful tool of                  saperi umani, Rome, Carocci, 2007.
analysis to filter the collected data according to
                                                         9.    Dematteis G., “Il sistema urbano”, in Fuà
the direct experience, in order to promote a more
                                                               G. (Ed.), Orientamenti per la politica del
attractive way to approach Urban Geography,                    territorio, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1991, pp.
regarded as a field that every one can                         483-513.
experience.
                                                         10.   de Spuches G., “La fantasmagoria del
                                                               moderno:       esposizioni    universali    e
                                                               metropoli”, Bollettino della Società Geo-
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Authors, C. Cirelli wrote paragraphs 1 and 5, T.         11.   De Vecchis G., Didattica della geografia.
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