During the 1980s, the Italian urban network therefore evolved in a very diversified way. From a demographic point of view, the process of deconcentration of the population has now been acquired in the central-northern regions, in the sense of both an attenuation of migratory currents and a redistribution of the population between the city proper and its neighboring areas.. This process is much less felt in the southern regions, and in particular for some of them the phenomenon of urbanization is still lively today, even if much less pronounced than in the past.
The situation with regard to urban functions is more complex. In the northern regions, with the same demographic concentration, the cities host services that are qualitatively superior, as well as highly diversified, and this applies in particular to the Milanese metropolitan area and the urbanized area of Turin. A similar phenomenon is found in the urban areas of Emilia, Tuscany, Veneto and, albeit with more nuanced characters, in Naples. More specifically, the territorial concentration of an extensive range of services in the Milan metropolitan area confirms the great potential of the offer in the Milan, Como and Varese triangle. The role of Turin and its hinterland is also relevant. In the face of these two great polarities of the Italian economic space, there is a certain dispersion in the large region which includes the so-called NEC model (North-East and Center), namely Veneto, Trentino-Alto Adige, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, ‘Emilia-Romagna, the coastal area of the Marche and northern Tuscany. The two main directions in which the development of these regions is innervated are very marked: the upper Po Valley axis aligned along the capitals Milan, Brescia, Verona, Padua, Venice with extensions towards Udine and Trieste, and the southern Padania route. along the Milan-Bologna axis and its extension with the Marche branch. There is also a good presence of outsourcing poles in the middle and lower Arno valley as well as in the coastal section of Liguria and Tuscany. Alongside the strategic services and the most important ones, there is a set of medium-high-ranking services, highly dynamic, and destined to spread from the traditionally more equipped areas to the regions in the phase of industrial take-off. In addition to traditional centers such as Milan, Turin, Genoa, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples and Palermo, these activities are also gradually offered by the provincial capitals and large municipalities.
According to TOPSCHOOLSINTHEUSA, the growth process that has established itself in Italy during the 1980s on the one hand determines an increase in the functional differences that exist between the major cities of the country and the intermediate urban fabric, on the other hand it is favoring the spread of functions medium and medium-high, once the prerogative of a few centers. In the most evolved economic systems, in regions with intense urbanization, the methods of structuring the geographical space increasingly tend to abandon hierarchical principles in favor of forms of integration of a functional type. This phenomenon is particularly evident in Padania, that is, in the traditionally ” strong ” region of the Italian economy, where the Christallerian principle of
A similar phenomenon does not yet involve the regions of the South, for which the basic principles of the theory of central localities continue to remain the most likely ways of constructing geographical space. Leaving aside the anomalies connected to the presence of Rome as the capital, the only two regions that seem sufficiently equipped with services, both for businesses and families, are Puglia and Campania. In particular, the greatest concentration of medium-range services, and therefore of the centers of the medium and medium-low urban network, is observed around Naples, which is at the top of a region that is confirmed as the main industrial and tertiary area of the South of the country. Puglia is characterized by a very different settlement typology, in which high diffusion characteristics can be recognized. Between these two regions and the rest of the country there is a functional fracture affecting the provinces of Grosseto, Viterbo, Terni, L’Aquila and Chieti; Below this band two systems emerge: the first focused on the Rome-Naples corridor, the other on the Apulian Bari-Brindisi-Taranto triangle. In the rest of the South, a great shortage of intermediate type tertiary activities is confirmed, with significant absences in the sectors that cater to businesses; the only exception is eastern Sicily, hierarchical in the Catania-Syracuse axis, with offshoots in southern Sicily. the other on the Apulian Bari-Brindisi-Taranto triangle. In the rest of the South, a great shortage of intermediate type tertiary activities is confirmed, with significant absences in the sectors that cater to businesses; the only exception is eastern Sicily, hierarchical in the Catania-Syracuse axis, with offshoots in southern Sicily. the other on the Apulian Bari-Brindisi-Taranto triangle. In the rest of the South, a great shortage of intermediate type tertiary activities is confirmed, with significant absences in the sectors that cater to businesses; the only exception is eastern Sicily, hierarchical in the Catania-Syracuse axis, with offshoots in southern Sicily.
