ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the economic change in the Italian urban system between 1981 and 1991. Its aim is to provide elements for the interpretation of the contribution given by the local urban systems, individually or through their geographical patterns, to the construction of the nation’s urban network in the perspective of European integration. In the past, the researchers who have tackled the problem of economic change from a territorial perspective were hampered by the lack of adequate information to establish a definition of the basic units of the Italian urban system (the cities) that went beyond the mere administrative boundaries. The local urban systems have been defined within the logic of the daily urban systems. From this theoretical framework, an urban system emerges as a time-space local concentration of population and economic activities that together form a relatively self-contained organisation of daily relations of interdependence.
