Un racconto per due città. Esperimenti su popolazioni e spazi urbani (Padova 1615 - Ferrara 1881)

Using as "ground" two Po Valley cities, geographically close but two and a half centuries apart, thus with very different social structures and urban morphologies (Padua 1615 and Ferrara 1881), a historiographical experiment is proposed. A path out of the juxtaposition between quantitativist "historical social science" and qualitative case studies is suggested, articulated in three moves : impoverishing data constructed from serial sources and changing analytical units using the extremization of contrasts as a guide in the change of scale. The comparison between the spatial configurations of the titles found in the "inquisition of houses" linked to the 1615 Estimate and of the qualification of "possidente" reported in the family records of the 1881 census, attributes chosen not so much for their significance but for their apparently ordinary and "trivial" character, proceeds along three stages : the examination of the distribution of the attributes in a neighborhood and its streets, then in the segments into which the streets are divided, and finally in the blocks that insist on the segments. The exercise is of methodological value only and could be gradually enriched by the cross-referencing of variables, other sources and diachronic. Seen at multiple scales, the social division of space confirms the importance of the dynamics of homogenization and distinction given in small spaces