IL PIEMONTE NORDORIENTALE: AREA “CERNIERA” O PIATTAFORMA TERRITORIALE NEL SISTEMA URBANO EUROPEO?

North-Eastern Piedmont: “hinge” region or territorial platform in the European urban system? – The study of intermediate urban systems as a widespread phenomenon that contributes to the shaping of megalopolis has received relatively little critical attention in Italy so far. Likewise, the analysis of the mutual relationships between intermediate urban systems and their core needs to be tackled with new perspectives: in fact, the “core-periphery” pattern does not work as a useful model to read a complex phenomenon marked only in part by “a certain level of functional autonomy”, balance, and stability. On the contrary, tensions, localism, and conflicts underlie intermediate urban systems. The aim of the present work is to study the intermediate urban system of Italian Northeastern Piedmont, a region that used to connect the metropolitan areas of Milan and Turin and has recently entered transcalar dynamics which are redrawing its position in Europe as well as new patterns of territorial decomposition and recomposition.