Quartiere e Reti sociali: analisi dei neighbouhood effects attraverso la prospettiva della Social Network Analysis

In recent decades, globalisation processes have oriented sociological studies towards the analysis of structures, flows and mobility on global scale, reducing interest in the dimensions of life closer to individuals, such as residential area, neighbourhood or urban space. This paper, favouring a network and systemic methodological approach, intends to show that local space, networks of friends and neighbours, places and the city still represent a key dimension, spatially and socially, of the citizens who live in it. Social Network Analysis will be proposed as one of the suitable perspectives to read these phenomena, since the tools, indicators and measures it proposes, make possible the empirical analysis of the link between territorial space and social space. The aim of this work is to present a review of the sociological studies on the subject that have chosen to apply the network models to the analysis of urban phenomena, including their resources, limits and possible developments.