Abstract
Abstract We still know relatively little about the processes of economic transformation in medium-sized towns, which are the cornerstone of the settlement system of many rural areas, together with small towns. This paper considers a group of 39 towns in Northern Italy, located in the area between Asti and Rovigo. Using data from the Italian National Institute of Data Statistics (ISTAT), we investigated the dynamics of the number of the employed at businesses in the periods of 2001–2011 and 2012–2017, the different specialisations of the towns and their ability to attract employees within the respective employment areas. Locally differentiated performance and evolutionary trajectories are evident, preventing us from being able to think of medium-sized (but also small) towns as a coherent whole. It is also clear how the drive towards centralising employees in towns increased following the Great Recession.
Highlights
Globalisation was the triumph of cities (Glaeser 2011)
We still know relatively little about the processes of economic transformation in medium-sized towns, which are the cornerstone of the settlement system of many rural areas, together with small towns
Using data from the Italian National Institute of Data Statistics (ISTAT), we investigated the dynamics of the number of the employed at businesses in the periods of 2001–2011 and 2012–2017, the different specialisations of the towns and their ability to attract employees within the respective employment areas
Summary
Globalisation was the triumph of cities (Glaeser 2011). metropolitan areas – key hubs for the competitiveness of national economies and on the front line in the quest for a sustainable development model – have attracted the most attention from academics and the mass media. Commuting flows are often taken into account to assess the ability of cities to dominate larger or smaller territorial surroundings In this regard, reflecting on the case of France, Nadou (2010) identifies three types of MSTs: 1) far away and autonomous from large urban centres and able to lay claim to their own area of influence; 2) located within the sphere of influence of a city; 3) positioned in an intermediate situation between the previous two points, i.e. not fully autonomous from a city, but with its own micro-regions. The TOWN study (ESPON 2014; Sýkora, Mulíček 2017) focuses extensively on the web of relationships on a local scale, identifying three typical spatial configurations of MSTs: 1) agglomerations in metropolitan areas; 2) willing to form a polycentric network in areas with a low level of urbanisation or in any case outside large urban agglomerations; 3) isolated in rural peripheral areas and characterised by a high level of autonomy. The Milan metropolitan area stretches well beyond the provincial administrative borders: an excellent example of how geographical images and perimeters set by law do not coincide (Bartaletti 2015)
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