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PresentationThis macro-session will deal with the complex dialectic between quantitative&#160;representations of the city and their use as sources in interpreting historical&#160;development. This issue is not highly visible among historians today, but it is crucial in&#160;attempting to properly apply the modern tools of scientific inquiry.&#160;On the one hand, the historian has an essential need for source criticism, which,&#160;in this case, can take leave from a thorough analysis of how the data was generated, of&#160;the interest that motivated its collection, of the categories used in its processing, of how&#160;it has been used in every age. Quantitative data is a valuable tool for comparing models&#160;and hypotheses on urban transformations and phenomena.On the other hand, there is the question of how today&#8217;s historians can use the&#160;information contained in figures and tables to answer inevitably varied questions;&#160;applying, in this case, categories and models derived from contemporary thought on the&#160;evolution of cities over time. The various sessions will address this issue through an approach that begins with&#160;individual items or specific problems but takes into consideration the views of everyone&#160;using data (historians of architecture, the city and the region, population, the economy,&#160;and society) as well as those who study the historical methods of construction (urban&#160;and economic historians, historians of the social sciences, science, and technology). This theme could be articulated in the following four sections:A) Quantitative sources: continuity and fracturesThe theme focuses primarily on the long-term evolution of quantitative sources&#160;(tax, military and police data, health records, public registries and statistics in a&#160;broad sense), and on how they have influenced historians&#8217; interpretations of the city. Proposed sessions should address solutions of continuity and the relationship between&#160;the emergence of new phenomena and the invention of new tools and the criteria for&#160;measuring them, as well as the consequent availability of sources.B) Numbers and city politicsThis section will address the conditioning exercised by quantitative data, its&#160;dissemination or, if applicable, its concealment, on territorial policies and the evolution&#160;itself of urban phenomena. The influence of numbers can be compared to that exerted&#160;by other descriptive and argumentative tools, with reference, as well, to the interest groups that have used them.C) Between city and territory: measuring urban systemsThis session will serve to place the &#8220;numbers of the city" within a broader&#160;territorial framework, so as to reconstruct the origins of both moments of crisis and&#160;expansive dynamics within a single urban context. It will also consider the origin or&#160;destination of flows of people and resources in an attempt to reconstruct a "zero-sum"&#160;picture of the changes in regional hierarchies. The tools that are useful in defining the&#160;changing boundaries of urban systems and their internal hierarchy will be discussed on&#160;the basis of case studies or methodological considerations.D) New technologies, new models and new sourcesThe section addresses the problem of quantifying phenomena of urban&#160;transformation combined with the new technologies for processing historical and&#160;archaeological data (3D, GIS, VR). Instead of focusing on technology in and of itself,&#160;emphasis will be placed on its use and on the different methodologies and approaches to&#160;sources this implies. It appears crucial to ask how these tools can add new knowledge to&#160;historical research, from the perspective of the costs and benefits of their use.To submitProposal for Session &#8220;Numbers&#8221; must be sent to Giovanni Favero (gfavero@unive.it) not later than October 7th 2012.When proposing a &#8220;Session&#8221; please give a title, the names of possible participants, a short text (max. 1000 charachters) and a brief curriculum vitae of the coordinator.The conference will take place in Catane (Italy), on the 12-13-14th September 2013&#160;Scientific CommitteeSalvatore Adorno, Universit&#224; di CataniaDonatella Calabi, Universit&#224; Iuav di VeneziaAldo Castellano, Politecnico di MilanoAugusto Ciuffetti, Universit&#224; Politecnica delle MarcheGiovanni Luigi Fontana, Universit&#224; di PadovaEnrico Iachello, Universit&#224; di CataniaPaola Lanaro, Universit&#224; Ca&#8217; Foscari di VeneziaFrancesca Martorano, Universit&#224; Mediterranea di Reggio CalabriaPaolo Militello, Universit&#224; di CataniaLuca Mocarelli, Universit&#224; Bicocca di MilanoRoberta Morelli, Universit&#224; di Roma &#8220;Tor Vergata&#8221;Massimiliano Savorra, Universit&#224; del MoliseDonatella Strangio, Sapienza Universit&#224; di RomaRosa Tamborrino, Politecnico di TorinoCarlo Travaglini, Universit&#224; di Roma Tre&#160;