Metropolitan areas concentrate the main share of population, production and consumption in OECD countries. They are likely to be one of the most important units for economic, social and environmental analysis as well as for the development of policy strategies. However, one of the main problems...

Polycentric development is a widely-used term both in academic research and in the normative agenda. However, its theoretical foundations and economic implications are still unknown and the concept of polycentricity still does not have a shared definition, or a shared measurement method. The aim...

This work introduces a method aimed at the identification of metropolitan sub-centres. Instead of using traditional and static methodologies based on morphological approaches (e.g. employment density), interaction measures have been employed, based on the Central Place theoretical tradition. In...

<em>Spatial structure and mobility patterns: towards a taxonomy of the Italian urban systems</em> - Urban spatial organization has become a wide field of research in the last years, since it is thought to be an important determinant of the city’s performance from many points of view. Nevertheless,...

The processes of spatial polarisation and territorial integration that have taken place in Italy since the 1950s have not been accompanied by corresponding institutional adaptations, generating the current huge discrepancy between the functional and political-administrative organisation of the...

Polycentricity at the metropolitan scale is perhaps the model of spatial organisation that needs to be investigated more thoroughly as regards its effects on travel. The aim of this paper is to test the role of polycentricity-as well as other spatial characteristics, such as compactness,...

Polycentric development is a widely used term both in academic research and in the normative agenda. However, its theoretical foundations and economic implications are still unclear and the concept of polycentricity still does not have a shared definition or a shared measurement method. The aim...

An increasing amount of empirical evidence documents that city-size distribution within a country follows a power law, often in the form of Zipf’s law. This paper provides new comparative evidence on city size distribution across OECD countries. It uses a database where urban agglomerations...

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether and to what extent the spatial configuration of an urban area affects its level of environmental externalities. Starting from previous contributions to this field of research, it examines several features of urban spatial structure - such as...

<em> Le città nello sviluppo economico dell'Emilia Romagna</em> (by Andrea Cirilli, Paolo Veneri) - ABSTRACT: Objectives Emilia Romagna is one of the largest and richest regions in Italy. Its development model and its spatial organization have raised much interest in the scientific as well as in the...