GeoJournal 43.4: 331338. 1997 (December) Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Globalisation and regional integration: the case of the Italian urban system
Dematteis, Guiseppe; D.I.T., Polytechnic and University of Turin, Italy
Received 16 April 1997; accepted 14 October 1997 Abstract. A recent study on the European integration of the Italian urban system shows that globalisation processes do not necessarily separate cities from their regional networks. The most successful cases of recent urban development in Italy are associated with the formation of metropolitan networked regions in which a major metropolitan centre is linked with cities of a lower level by hierarchical, complementary and synergetic relations. The paper examines the result of an analysis carried out on 148 major Italian daily urban systems. It takes into account two sets of indicators: one referring to the supraregional network interactions, measuring the degree of globalisation, and one referring to the proximity interactions inside the regional networks, measuring the degree of regional cohesion. They allow the definition of typologies of urban systems founded on a (normally positive) correlation between supraregional functional openness and regional integration. Key words: urban systems, urban networks, metropolitan systems, globalisation, regional cohesion

1. Introduction The globalisation process, increasing the intensity of competition between cities, favours the centralisation of upper level functions and of urban growth in few metropolitan systems (Sallez and Verot, 1993; Veltz, 1996). In many cases, notably those of the global cities, these processes seem to give rise to a growing separation of metropolitan systems from the regional and national urban networks of which they are a part (Cattan et al., 1994). This kind of territorial fragmentation is perceived as a serious threat to the social and spatial cohesion of the individual countries and of the whole European Union. Against it, the European Commission (1994, Comit de Dveloppement Spatial, 1996) and some member countries, such as France, recommend the formation of regional networks of small and medium sized cities. These voluntary networks, founded on proximity relations of complementarity, should enable the weaker urban systems to compete with the stronger ones, by acting together as a single large ur-

ban system (de Lavergne and Mollet, 1991; Camagni, 1993). A recent study of the European integration of Italian urban systems (Dematteis and Bonavero, 1997) offers some empirical evidence about this issue. It will be used here to demonstrate that globalisation processes do not necessarily separate cities from their urban networks and regional contexts. On the other hand, the cohesion of regional urban networks seems difficult to achieve simply by voluntary networking of small and medium sized cities in competition with metropolitan systems. A more practicable and realistic way seems to consist in supporting and managing the present growth of regional metropolitan networked systems. They would include at least one metropolitan centre (or a potential one) and cities of lower levels, all linked together not only by hierarchical relations, but also by complementary and synergetic ones.

332 2. Indicators and methodology This presentation will consider the 148 major Italian daily urban systems (DUS)1 The analysis will take into account two types of spatial relations: 1. long-distance relations, in which the local system acts as a node for supraregional networks of interaction, that we shall refer to in brief as network relations; 2. relations of proximity, in which the system interacts at the regional and subregional scale with the closest urban systems, that we shall refer to as territorial relations. The first belong to a virtual space (or global network space), in which the interactions are influenced little, if at all, by physical distance; they reflect the division of labour at the supraregional scale and thus indicate the degree of globalisation of the urban systems. The second type of relations occurs in territorial space where the friction of distance, physical features and historical legacies have a significant influence; they reflect the degree of regional cohesion of the urban systems. Although acting on different levels and in different ways, these two groups of relations do not rule each other out, but, as we shall see, interact in their respective spheres: network interactions transform physical space and the structures of the latter condition the network connections. The following indicators were used to measure the importance of the network interactions, i.e. the degree of supraregional functional openness or degree of globalisation of each DUS. 1. Size of the DUS measured in resident population and jobs (1991). The assumption is that network interaction grows with size. 2. Economic base specialisation of the DUS (1991), measured with location quotients (over 1) in (a) business services, (b) manufacturing industry, (c) consumer services (as an indicator of tourist services). The assumption is that network interaction increases with specialisation and its importance increases with the quality of activities, in this order: (c), (b), (b and a), (a). 3. The degree of internationalisation. The assumption is that network interaction increases with the number of international functions, ranging from 0 to 20, present in the DUS (Bonavero, 1997). The following indicators were used to measure the intensity of territorial interactions, i.e. the degree of regional integration and cohesion). 4. Intensity and level of interactions within the regional urban network to which the DUS belongs, measured in: (a) density of the urban nodes, represented by DUSs, (b) intensity of travel-to-work

G. Dematteis journeys between DUSs, (c) numbers of hierarchical functional levels in the regional network. 5. Position (hierarchical level) of the DUS in the regional network. 6. Diffusive demographic dynamics, measured in numbers of contiguous DUSs with demographic growth during the, 1980s. For each of these indicators, the 148 DUSs considered were organised into classes to which scores were attributed. For the single DUS, the sum of the scores of the indicators 1, 2 and 3 offers a rough measure of the functional openness of the DUS in a global network space. By summing up the scores of indicators 4, 5 and 6, instead, we obtain a rough measure of the regional cohesion of the DUS. As we shall see in the following sections, the ratio between these two measures (functional openness and regional cohesion) enables enquiry into the relationships between network (global) interations and territorial (proximity) interactions. The same measures also offer a useful method for classification of the DUSs.

3. The daily urban systems as nodes of global networks The measures of size, economic specialisation and degree of internationalisation reveal the following classes of DUSs, in decreasing order of importance of supraregional network interaction. A1 Major dynamic and open systems. These have a population of over 500,000 inhabitants and/or over 150,000 jobs. They have an advanced tertiary/production specialisation and a complete, or almost complete, range of international functions. It includes 7 DUSs: Milan, Rome, Turin, Florence, Bologna, Padua and Verona. A2 Major open systems. These have a population of over 500,000 inhabitants and/or over 125,000 jobs. Compared to group A1 they have less differentiation in the economic base and a slightly more restricted range of international functions. It includes 7 DUSs: Naples, Genoa, Palermo, Venice, Catania, Bari and Cagliari. A3 Dynamic and open medium to large systems. These have a specialised tertiary/production structure and a range of international functions, i.e. immediately below that of the metropolises. Included here are, 19 DUSs, indicated in Figure 1. B1 Open specialised systems. These have less than 250,000 inhabitants and/or 100,000 jobs, and a production structure specialised in services or industry or both. They also have fairly well developed international functions. Includes 28 DUSs. B2 Weakly open specialised systems. These are gener-

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Figure 1. The major Italian daily urban systems classified by their degree of integration into global networks.

ally of medium size. Production structure specialised in services or industry, or both, and a limited range of international functions. Includes 41 DUSs with important functions on the regional and sub-regional scale. C1 Open non-specialised systems. Despite their size, they have a weak or poorly differentiated production

structure, and international functions range from average to weak. Includes 7 DUSs. C2 Mono-specialised systems. These are of medium size, usually specialised in manufacturing and with functions limited to the export of goods. This group includes 10 DUSs.

334 C3 Non-specialised systems. Medium size without productive specialisation and with only one or no international functions. Includes 28 DUSs. Figure 1illustrates the geographical distribution of the 148 urban systems belonging to the classes described above. The map offers a synthetic picture of the functional urban structure of the country. The first two classes, corresponding to the metropolitan level, are more numerous in the North, but are relatively well distributed throughout the country. Although in the North and Centre regions there are numerous urban systems of mid to high functional size categories (A3, B1 and B2) around and between the metropolitan poles, in the South these are completely missing in the metropolitan rings and very scarce elsewhere. If we consider that in the North this is, relatively, the most numerous (62% of the Italian total) and best distributed class, it has to be concluded that the most serious spatial imbalance does not involve the metropolitan level but the regional articulation of the mid to upper level of the urban system.

G. Dematteis

4. Urban systems as the nodes of regional networks If we consider the degree of regional cohesion of the urban systems, as defined in section 2, one notes a consistent correspondence between the values of these indicators and those for supraregional network interactions. This suggests the hypothesis that the urban systems well integrated in their regional networks participate within them in a division of labour that favours their access to the global networks. The reciprocal effect is also probable, i.e. that usually the urban systems that fit best into the global networks receive and transmit impulses within their regional area that tend to strengthen and expand the regional systems themselves. The competitive advantages of the cities would thus lie not only in their relationship with the local milieu, but also in their relations with the regional structures they belong to. The latter are represented in Figure 2, which illustrates the regional urban conditions (settlement patterns) that influence supraregional network connections. The better integrated systems are those of the metropolitan functional regions. These are larger travelto-work areas, defined in a similar way to the method used for the local urban systems (ISTAT-IRPET, 1986). The upper level functional urban regions are again cohesive but usually smaller. They include one or more of the 148 DUSs considered here, gravitating around a single pole (or two as in the case of Trieste and Udine). There are then areas such as that of the Po valley from Novara to Trieste, that of Emilia-Ro-

Figure 2. Italian regional urban structures.

magna from Parma to the Adriatic coast and that of Northern Tuscany, where the metropolitan and urban functional regions are connected together by a dense and articulated settlement pattern on various functional levels, linked by relations of hierarchy and complementarity. A lower degree of regional cohesion is shown by the dense fragmented settlement patterns in which the mesh of medium and medium-high urban systems, although relatively dense, does not have the same intensity of connections. Finally, there are vast peripheral or marginal zones in which the same mesh, as well as being fragmented, is also often much thinner and more discontinuous, with only few, relatively isolated urban poles.

5. Global networks and regional integration: a comprehensive classification The diagram in Figure 3 offers an assessment of the relationship that exists between the degree of regional integration (cohesion) of the urban systems and their degree of supraregional functional openness (globalisation). The axes represent the scores that give a synthetic measurement of the two variables, as calculated from the indicators illustrated previously. Notwithstanding the approximation and the relatively arbitrary nature of a measurement through

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Figure 3. The position of Italian daily urban systems in the relationship between network interactions and regional interactions.

scores, the result is interesting, above all because the dispersion of the scores suggests a positive correlation between the two groups of indicators; in addition, the various regions of the diagram offer the possibility of reaching a comprehensive classification, which takes into account both the projections of the cities into the virtual network space and their integration into regional space. It should also be observed that the most numerous and largest deviations are for those urban systems with a relatively strong degree of international functional openness and a relatively weak degree of regional integration (groups 2C, 3B and 4B). In these cases, we have to presume that the network relations are rooted principally in the systems local milieu and that their positive effects are bounded by the single DUS. The major sets of urban systems that can be observed in the diagram are the following. 1A Metropolitan systems. 12 urban systems: Milan, Rome, Florence, Turin, Bologna, Bari, Naples, Palermo, Venice, Cagliari, Catania, Genoa. While the first seven are far ahead of the other urban systems, both in terms of network and territorial interactions, the last five have similar scores to the other systems in groups 2A and 2B in one or other of the two groups of relations. 1B Para-metropolitan urban systems. 9 major urban poles (Padua, Verona, Vicenza, Brescia, Bergamo, Udine, Trieste, Parma and Modena) that support the network system of the eastern Po valley. Although smaller than the metropolitan systems, their degree of network and territorial interaction is the same as that of some of the larger systems.

2A Integrated urban systems. 31 urban systems, all in the Centre-North region, which are part of metropolitan rings or articulated regional systems or which, like Perugia, Ancona, Bolzano, Trento and Pescara, are the central poles of peripheral regions. 2B Integrated urban systems with a weak territorial component. 9 urban systems, all from the CentreNorth (with the exclusion of Sassari), which have a serious weakness in territorial integration compared to the relatively high levels of supraregional interaction. 3A Fairly integrated urban systems. The most numerous and heterogeneous group (49 U.S.). It includes sub-metropolitan systems, systems with a strong manufacturing or tourism specialisation and subregional poles. 3B Fairly integrated urban systems with a weak territorial component. 8 urban systems whose territorial integration is decidedly inferior to their network integration. 4A Weakly integrated urban systems., 19 DUSs, all in the South except one (Rovigo), belonging to larger metropolitan systems or with sub-regional territorial functions that are usually more important than network functions. 4B Very weakly integrated urban systems. 14 cases of southern urban systems with access to local networks that ranges from weak to nil and with a very limited role in territorial organisation.

336 6. Conclusions The indications we can draw from our analysis can be summarised in terms of three main issues (see also Figure 4).

G. Dematteis Regional network connections are more important than size. Although it is true that the development of the urban network depends on the capacity for autonomous development of individual urban systems, it is also true that the latter draw advantages from their

Figure 4. The position of Italian daily urban systems in the relationship between network interactions and regional interactions.

Globalisation and regional integration integration into regional networks, dominated by metropolitan systems. While in the fifties and sixties, Italy (but also France and other European countries) saw the growth of the metropolitan poles draw resources from the minor centres, slowing their growth, the last twenty years have seen the opposite occur. The proximity of the metropolitan poles now seems to stimulate the division of labour between the nodes of the regional networks, with threshold and development effects at all levels of the urban hierarchy. In particular: functional and demographic growth in minor urban systems and functional qualitative upgrading in metropolitan systems, even in the absence of population growth. Similar effects are also found in regions such as Veneto where, although lacking major metropolitan poles, highly connected networks have been formed. The most favourable conditions are those in which, such as the case of Lombardy, the two typologies the hierarchical, monocentric one and the network, polycentric one overlap and combine. In any case, these dense and dynamic regional urban systems, where complementary and synergetic relations already tend to develop spontaneously, appear to be particularly fertile terrain for implementing network policies on the regional and subregional scale. Almost all the Italian regional systems are now tending to evolve towards interconnected structures. In Piedmont, the monocentrism of Turin is balanced by the emergence of non-centripetal connections and networks. Lazio is gradually changing from being a typical example of a region poorly integrated with its metropolitan centre (which could even be seen as having undergone desertification because of the abnormal growth of the capital) into a multipolar urban system and branching into neighbouring regions. The dense and articulated networks of Emilia-Romagna and northern Tuscany improve their cohesion with the rise of Bologna and, even more, Florence as dominant metropolitan poles. The role of Naples in the network of Campania is in many ways similar to that of Rome in Lazio. We can also expect positive effects from a further strengthening of Bari on a regional urban network that is already well outlined. Other large urban systems, both in the north (Genoa) and in the south (Cagliari, Catania and Palermo) are going through an implosive phase, and the regional networks are feeling the effects. Not for nothing do these large but isolated systems show weak values of functional openness when compared to their size and to those of other systems such as Vicenza and Brescia (and the parametropolitan group in general) which are smaller but integrated into strong regional systems. Regional systems replace the metropolitan areas. We

337 must recognise that the driving structure of regional development is no longer the metropolitan area by itself. The concept of metropolitan area as it is commonly understood and applied in Italy and in other European countries refers more to the urban concentration of the sixties that to the current phase of selective polarisation, more to the old form of compact agglomeration and suburbanisation than to the new networked regional structures, no longer based on continuous settlement expansion. By their very nature, the latter escape purely territorial control, and so it would seem illusory to imagine governing the new forms and articulations of the urban networks by multiplying the tiers of local government, defining new administrative partitions or adjusting the borders of existing ones to adapt them to the evolution of the regional structures. Given that urban and regional spaces cannot be taken for granted, but change continuously with the geometry of the networks, the spatial forms of local and regional government must also have a variable geometry and be based on networks of co-operation between public actors with different functional and spatial responsibilities. The connection of the regional systems does not imply their merger. In Italy, an alignment along a central backbone seems to emerge in line with the European dorsale. It includes the strong regional systems centred on Milan, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples. To the East and West of this backbone, the structures are relatively weaker. In Po Valley, the relatively weaker ones are those of Veneto and Piedmont; in peninsular Italy one can make out an Adriatic alignment parallel to the central one to the east, but with only one metropolitan pole (Bari). To the west, on the Tyrrhenian coasts, the urban networks of Liguria, southern Tuscany, Calabria, Sardinia and Sicily are rather weak. The recognition of axial patterns in the Italian urban system at national level is, however, an over-simplification, in that there is hardly continuity even between the various regional systems. Even the strong regional systems of the Po Valley appear separated by zones of low urban density which are also areas of negative demographic trends, without being poor. In particular, the line of the River Po creates a border effect, which is anything but negative in that it limits the network expansion of the settlement patterns, thus offering support for desirable policies to limit urban sprawl. The Apennine backbones, the inland mountains of Sardinia and the Alpine chain are all precious natural conditions for similar policies of containment, which obviously do not exclude an increase in functional connections and flows between regional urban systems.

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Note 1. As defined by ISTAT et al (1994), using the figures of the daily residence-work movement from the 1991 census. These travel-towork areas show a good correspondence with the Italian local urban systems (Sforzi, 1991). The 148 DUS considered here have more than 100,000 residents and/or 30,000 full-time jobs.

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ment de lEspace Communautaire (SDEC). Propositions presentes au Conseil informal des ministres en charge de lamnagement du territoire, Venise 34 mai, 1996. Dematteis, G.; Bonavero, P.: (eds.), Il sistema urbano italiano nello spazio unificato europeo. Il Mulino, Bologna, 1997. (English edition to be published by Avebury, Aldershot, U.K.). European Commission. D.G. XVI: Europe 2000 plus. E.C., Bruxelles, 1994. ISTAT, IRPET: I mercati locali del lavoro in Italia. F. Angeli, Milano, 1986. ISTAT, IRPET, University of Newcastle U.T., University of Leeds, I sistemi locali del lavoro in Italia, 1991. ISTAT, Roma, 1994. de Lavergne, F.; Mollet, Ph.: The international development of intermediate sized cities in Europe: strategies and networks. Ekistics, 350351, 368380 (1991). Sallez, A.; Vrot, P.: Les villes en question. In Sallez, A. (ed.) Les villes, lieux dEurope, 147178. Datar, Paris, Editions de lAube, 1993. Sforzi, F.: La delimitazione dei sistemi urbani: concetti, definizioni e metodi. In: Bertuglia, S.; La Bella, A. (eds.), I sistemi urbani, 443 485. F.Angeli, Milano, 1991. Veltz, P.: Mondialisation Villes et territoires. PUF, Paris, 1996.

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