ABSTRACT
The change of a national urban systems is not only and directly related to the flows of relations and exchanges that circulate in the supra-local networks, but depends significantly on all of the resources of milieu characterising each local urban system. To give a basic definition, the concept of milieu denotes the set of environmental conditions in a given urban system. The complexity that characterises the concept of milieu has many implications for the problem of empirical analysis and, in the end, for the very purposes of the analysis. The milieu of a given urban system, understood as a set of ‘grips’ or potentials which must be recognised and grasped through the action of local actors, reveals both an ‘objective’ and a ‘subjective’ nature. The cultural and scientific environment is defined by three components: cultural provision, local identification of university structures and their attractiveness..
