Metropolitan areas are changing profoundly in the globalization era. They are, more and more, characterised by settlement patterns in which city sprawl is the prevailing feature. The real novelty is the multipolar nature that they are assuming, in contrast with traditional settlement patterns of metropolises in the old economy era. Among others features, new industrial and commercial landscapes are marking metropolitan sprawl worldwide. Phenomena like the settlement of new high-tech production facilities or the diffusion of commercial clusters or large shopping malls represent an important attribute of metropolitan systems. In this scenario, planning has to confront new challenges related to the increasingly complex interactions between urban places as centres for economic, social and cultural life, and new dynamics marked by complex flows of information, services and labour resources. Moreover, cities, the place of knowledge based economies, are becoming nodes of a complex network where competition in attracting investments is becoming fierce. In this scenario, the major cities of European lagging regions, including the Italian Mezzogiorno are confronting this new perspectives with a specific stance. In particular, some areas of Southern Italy are in an uncertain condition, between a substantial alignment with the consumption patterns and lifestyles of richer areas and a weak capacity of assuming a relevant role in the global network of competing cities. This paper presents some findings of a more comprehensive research on the Catania Metropolitan Area, the second largest city and the only one that is assuming a marked multipolar configuration in Sicily. In particular, the focus is on localisation patterns of commercial activities and on the emergence of an embryonic diffusion of high-tech firms, generated by the presence of a state-of- art semiconductor plant. A smart marketing action conducted in the second half of the 1990’s was able to partially reverse the negative stigma attached to the city, but this was not 265 followed by an effort to set up a coherent policy at metropolitan level. The considerable gain in terms of city image has been not accompanied by substantial actions aimed at solving the major inefficiencies of this metropolitan system, within a coherent strategic framework aimed at favouring/orienting the overall development of the area. However, the analyses of collected data reveal that settlement dynamics begin to follow a pattern that take advantage of the dense interactions that characterise this metropolitan area like larger and better managed ones.
il contributo indaga le relazioni tra l’evoluzione dei sistemi metropolitani e la localizzazione delle attività non residenziali. Il caso di studio è presentato a partire da una disamina delle politiche L’analisi delle dinamiche localizzative di tali attività nell’area catanese, ha evidenziato dinamiche analoghe a quelle dei contesti maggiormente sviluppati. Dallo studio condotto emerge come i nuovi fattori localizzativi delle attività ad alta tecnologia riescano a controbilanciare le inefficienze insediative di un contesto sviluppatosi in assenza di un coerente sistema di pianificazione del territorio.
The Clumsy Metropolis Urban Dynamics and Globalization in a Metropolitan Area of the Southern Italy
MARTINICO, Francesco
2005-01-01
Abstract
Metropolitan areas are changing profoundly in the globalization era. They are, more and more, characterised by settlement patterns in which city sprawl is the prevailing feature. The real novelty is the multipolar nature that they are assuming, in contrast with traditional settlement patterns of metropolises in the old economy era. Among others features, new industrial and commercial landscapes are marking metropolitan sprawl worldwide. Phenomena like the settlement of new high-tech production facilities or the diffusion of commercial clusters or large shopping malls represent an important attribute of metropolitan systems. In this scenario, planning has to confront new challenges related to the increasingly complex interactions between urban places as centres for economic, social and cultural life, and new dynamics marked by complex flows of information, services and labour resources. Moreover, cities, the place of knowledge based economies, are becoming nodes of a complex network where competition in attracting investments is becoming fierce. In this scenario, the major cities of European lagging regions, including the Italian Mezzogiorno are confronting this new perspectives with a specific stance. In particular, some areas of Southern Italy are in an uncertain condition, between a substantial alignment with the consumption patterns and lifestyles of richer areas and a weak capacity of assuming a relevant role in the global network of competing cities. This paper presents some findings of a more comprehensive research on the Catania Metropolitan Area, the second largest city and the only one that is assuming a marked multipolar configuration in Sicily. In particular, the focus is on localisation patterns of commercial activities and on the emergence of an embryonic diffusion of high-tech firms, generated by the presence of a state-of- art semiconductor plant. A smart marketing action conducted in the second half of the 1990’s was able to partially reverse the negative stigma attached to the city, but this was not 265 followed by an effort to set up a coherent policy at metropolitan level. The considerable gain in terms of city image has been not accompanied by substantial actions aimed at solving the major inefficiencies of this metropolitan system, within a coherent strategic framework aimed at favouring/orienting the overall development of the area. However, the analyses of collected data reveal that settlement dynamics begin to follow a pattern that take advantage of the dense interactions that characterise this metropolitan area like larger and better managed ones.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
