Analysing the models of space in three very different societies, i.e., the complex traditional society of India, representative of all similar societies of antiquity, the simple society of the Sudanese Dogon of southern Mali, representative of so-called primitive societies, and the complex ancient Greek society, the first ancient society that opened the way to Western thought, the text brings forth their acute differences to spatial models in modern and postmodern societies. The general cultural isotopies in the pre-capitalist models examined govern both semiotic spatial production and consumption. This symmetrical form of the communication circuit is lost in modern societies, while for postmodern space (which follows a variation of the culturalist model), the overriding isotopy is a constructed traditionality, that stresses nostalgia, pseudo-history and playfulness.

The epistemological argument of the chapter is the need to extend semiotics and sociosemiotics to social semiotics. The goal is to cover the field of the semiotics of settlement space, by using a theoretical model based on the following concepts. (1) The differentiation between space and place. Space refers to an external, material object, while place is an internalised semiotic object. (2) The political economy of space, offering the framework for the articulation of semiotics as the cultural component with the material socio-economic component. (3) In the context of space as place, the differentiation between space-as-text, that is, the semiotic approach to external material space, and space-in-text, the semiotic conception of space as appearing in any kind of text. (4) The semiotic production and consumption of settlement space, in accordance with the above three subfields of semiotics, using as an example the plan of the architect Ernest Hébrard for the city of Thessaloniki, Greece.

he special issue of Degrés devoted to the Covid-19 pandemic is both timely and exciting.It is a pleasure to see a contemporary social issue addressed by semioticians with solid theoretical foundations.The articles are of such quality that they invite us to take up the authors' challenge and, while presenting their contributions, continue the discussion comparatively and critically.

The research question of the present paper is what relation exists between biology and cultural semiosis and I examine as a token of this question the relation between the physiological senses of proprioception and the cultural concepts corresponding to them. While the origins of semiosis are biological, the origin of proprioceptive concepts is debated. Against the biological view that the proprioceptive senses define directly the concepts corresponding to them, there is an opposite view supporting that these concepts are culture-specific. The concept of "classification system" is counter-proposed as the structural framework for the study of proprioceptive concepts. The paper discusses the senses and concepts of proprioception on the basis of a large corpus of anthropological and archaeological material concerning the semiotic systems of precapitalist societies and with the help of a set of metalinguistic spatial concepts. These metalinguistic concepts are up vs. down, front vs. rear, and right vs. left. The senses corresponding to them lead to the senses and concepts of spatial orientation and presuppose a point of reference, closely related to the sense of equilibrium. My conclusion is that the cultural concepts corresponding to these senses are not directly extrapolated from the senses themselves, but are culture-specific and each time integrated within a different cultural and social environment.

Land-use planning is currently characterised by three weaknesses: a relative lack of systematic analysis of the theoretical and technical aspects of planning, a neglect of methodology and a lack of interest in clarifying key concepts. The present paper attempts to address these issues in a systematic manner on the basis of an explicit epistemological background. The strategy adopted is to focus on ten critical concepts covering the key areas of the field of land-use planning theory. The discussion is organised into two main sections, one on theory and one on methodology, which are examined both in their general sense and specifically as they apply to planning theory. Through an analytical discussion of each of the ten concepts and a critique of previous approaches, the paper proposes a new kind of land-use planning theory, spatiology, considered as a prerequisite for applied land-use planning, and a new view on the structuring of land-use planning methodology. The final aim of the paper is not simply to list the concepts, but to formulate an organised conceptual whole resulting from their interrelation which can provide a solid foundation for planning theory.

It is clear that urban planning is not a theoretical science, but an applied field. However, this does not imply - or justify - the lack of an analytical field that would lay the scientific foundations of urban planning and guide planning practice. This field, which we call urbanology, must consist of a theory of urban uses, since the latter constitute the foundation of all international planning practice. As part of the process of formation of this theory, the present paper focuses on defining the unitary types of urban uses, that is, the units which constitute the smallest, not further divisible typological elements of the organisation of urban space. We begin with the definitions of the basic concepts of urbanology, namely: urban use, unitary type of urban use, land use and institutionalised land-use zone. We then attempt to specify the criteria for determining the unitary types of urban uses, which when applied to Greek space leads to the specification of 330 types of urban uses. We also demonstrate that this work does not only concern the analysis of urban space and the survey stage of urban planning, but also planning proposals and legislation.