Per un'analisi lessicometrica della rivista Urbanistica

The main aim of this contribution is to explore the evolution of the urban planning discipline from the post-war period to present, drawing on the privileged viewpoint of the journal of the National Urbanistic Institute, titled Urbanistica. For more than 70 years, with particular reference to Italy, the journal has been collecting the most interesting design and research experiences, as well as the most significant reflections on the role of urban planning. The study employs lexicometric analytical techniques (quantitative analyses for extraction of relevant statistical information from the normalised sample of texts, in particular: lexical extension, rank, frequency classes, etc.), applied here to the total occurrences and relations of the words in the 2,934 titles of the articles published in Urbanistica from 1949 to 2021. The contribution is organised into two sections, the first proposing an articulation of the articles published in Urbanistica in four time intervals, defined in relation to the editorial history of the journal and the evolution of the cultural and technical-scientific debate in Italy. The second section presents and discusses the results obtained from the lexicometric analyses on the titles of all the articles published between 1949 and 2021, with respect to rank and frequency classes. Among others, two of the most interesting results of the review are: - the development of the themes and insights collected by the journal, serving as a faithful mirror of the evolution of the discipline; - the aspects and interdisciplinary contents that most influenced Italian urban planning discipline (and not only) over the past 70 years.