Ennio De Giorgi was one of the greatest Italian mathematicians of the twentieth
century. Born in Lecce on February 8, 1928 and died prematurely in Pisa on October 25,
1996, he carried out his activity at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa from 1959 to 1996.
The IPSAPA conference to which this book is dedicated was the first that took place after
twenty years of his death. The President, former pupil and assistant of his, therefore, decided
to remind him so that the relevance for the world of applications of his methods in research
and teaching might clearly appear. To illustrate these less publicized aspects, still of great
importance, some geometric themes useful in cartographic and design disciplines were
chosen. Above all his famous regularity theorem is interpreted in its urbanistic meaning. It is
actually meaningful both in planning for the future and in historical analysis of urban
evolution.
