Acceso usuarios
Giuseppe Carta
During the last decade the rapprochement of religious groups in the public realm had become a major issue for social sciences. Whilst the use of spatial and even geographic metaphors has been widely introduced in the academic debate to talk about religion, geography of religion as a subfield of human geography has gained a deep theoretical renewal. Departing from insights of Casanova, Kong and Knott, this paper aims to critically analyze the inherent urban dimension of deprivatization of religions. The case of study is Ave Maria Town, an exclusive residential community founded by a conservative Catholic think-tank following the thinking of theologists such as Michael Novak and Richard J. Neuhaus. The focus is on the occurring relationships between public administration and religious agencies within the symbolic construction of territorial identity and the defining of urban planning policy and practice. The study argues that a geographical approach can further explain the inner transformations of religion in modernity.
