This article analyzes the concept of community using the network analysis perspective. In opposition to classical studies (sociological and anthropological) that identify communities with particular residential units, it is necessary to study a community as a network of relations rather than as a spatially defined unit. The community is not a “place” but a network of meaningful social relations with friends, neighbors, relatives, and work colleagues who do not necessarily belong to the same residential unit. This article analyzes personal relations and various forms of communication and exchange that take place in different ambits and argues that community studies must be approached from a network analytic perspective. Although social and spatial dimensions may condition and reinforce each other, communities are not places that can be circumscribed spatially. Rather than the spatial dimension, social networks integrate and separate, defining exclusion from or inclusion in particular domains.

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More than fifteen years after the introduction of direct election, the mayors are still the most popular politicians in Italy. The personal relationship set up with the citizens and the strengthening of the city councils has restored energy and stability to the action of the municipal administrations. Nevertheless, these institutional reforms, while important, have failed to guarantee good government. The effects of the mayoral reform are, in fact, considerably different from one city to another, and from one type of policy to another. What does this variety of results derive from? The book provides an answer to this question through an investigation of the decisional processes of around a hundred "local collective assets" in six large metropolitan cities. To explain the different outcomes – in addition to the "council effect", that is, the relevance of policy, and the "sector effect", the relevance of the different decisional milieus – the authors also underscore the role of the "governance effect", namely the different approaches to decision-making and building consensus on urban policies.

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