25

Finding the contemporary urban scenario too complex to be captured by conventional framework, this article proposes the “Visual Urban Sociology” as a new methodological approach for studying identity, space and structure of European cities. This interdisciplinary strategy, based upon the integration of sociology and photography, aims at analysing the “European urban landscape” and its changes. In order to visualise the ongoing “dispersion of urban space”, the socio-iconographic research focuses on three major European net-city systems: the Italian “Megalopolis padana” (visual method day aerial-photography; day photo-topography); the “Mediterranean sun-belt” from Trieste to Valencia (visual method satellite views); the “central Europe diffuse urbanization” visualised by the night satellite views of net-city light: a phenomenon known as the “Blu-Banana” (visual method night satellite views).