International Journal of human settlements culture and planning in developing countries  -  SAPIENZA University of Rome

ISSN 1125-6257

The journal "urbanistica pvs", born in March 1989 as a bulletin concerning the human settlements in the so-called Developing Countries,  became in the 1994 a periodical publication of the SAPIENZA University of Rome through the inscription in the press register of the Rome Tribunal.

The formal recognition as a SAPIENZA publication and the assumption of the responsibility of its four months periodicity of production and diffusion has been an important moment of change from which derived the formulation of a Scientific Committee (*) composed of experts in the matter of human settlements in the developing countries, so to be able to feed and to guarantee the life and the continuity of the periodical. 

From its foundation "urbanistica pvs" aimed to build a net in expansion of scientific connection with research centres, universities, NGOs and CBOs engaged in research and operative activities concerning the human settlements, the habitat, the inhabitant society, the building technologies, the urban and territorial organisation, the environment and the cultural identity protection in the developing countries but also in the countries economically developed having underdevelopment problems. 

The scientific space of the human settlements problems, only episodically dedicated by other periodicals to those topics, avails itself of the original contributions of Italian and foreigners researchers and professional specialists of several disciplines. 

The participation of the Journal to the worldwide event of Istanbul Conference, in the 1996 and its presentation in Internet  represented two important moments for the "urbanistica pvs" development.  

The first one has attracted the attention and interest of our Journal for seven years (1994-2001), that is from the preparatory phase of the Istanbul Conference to the verification of the Habitat Agenda 's implementation (Istanbul+5), held in New York five years after the Istanbul Conference (June 2001).

The presentation in Internet  had the effect of conveying a growing specific interest of researchers, professionals, scholar that offered articles on results of their researches to be published in the Journal. 

About the aspect of the scientific and cultural promotion, that ever more characterised "urbanistica pvs", it can be said that the periodical recalled the attention of Italian researchers interested, or already engaged, in the developing countries research favouring the establishment of groups of research in several Italian universities and the funding by the Italian Research Ministry of projects promoted by several Italian university departments.

This is the case of SAPIENZA University of Rome that in the years 1985, 2000 and 2002 obtained, through national competition, the national co-ordination of groups of research of other Italian universities for relevant researches concerning topics of developing countries.

An important effect of such competitive result has been the involvement, in the research, of Developing Countries institutions members as:  the Asian Institute of Technology of Bangkok, the Middle East Technical University of Ankara, the Sinan University of Istanbul, the Universidad de Mexico City, l'Ecole Polytechnique d'Architecture et d'Urbanisme of Alger and several other foreign research centres. 

The urban and territorial problems of the  today World - not only the immense ones of the underdevelopment - appear ever more to recall the attention, the urgency and the research of solutions for the problems generated by the growing poverty and insecurity.  So the challenge, also for  "urbanistica pvs",  is becoming an arduous one.

The issue 41 of “urbanistica pvs” of December 2005 presents an annex, here reproduced, with the index by authors and by numbers issued, of the editorial activity developed by the periodical in its 18 years of life.