ABSTRACT

As a main urban centre of one of the most dynamic European regions, Milan is a key location from which to study narratives of innovations and contemporary productions – old and new manufacturing, tertiary and consumptive sectors, creative and cultural economy – and investigate their influence both on spatial patterns and urban policy agenda.

Accordingly, this book explores the contentious geographies of innovation, productions and working spaces, both empirically and theoretically in a city that, since the beginning of the 2000s, has been involved in a process of urban change, with relevant spatial and socio-economic effects, within an increasingly turbulent world economy. Through this analysis, the book provides an insight into the complexity of contemporary urban phenomena beyond a traditional metropolitan lens, highlighting issues such as rescaling, urban decentralization and recentralization, extensive urban transformation and shrinkage and molecular urban regeneration.

This book is a valuable resource for academics, researchers and scholars focusing on Urban Studies such as Urban Policy, Urban Planning, Urban Geography, Urban Economy and Urban Sociology.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|29 pages

Which Milan?

Setting the scene for reflecting urban decline, resilience, and change

chapter 2|12 pages

Urban regionalization and metropolitan resurgence

Discontinuity and persistence of a spatial dialectic

chapter 5|11 pages

Sharing economy

Makerspaces, co-working spaces, hybrid workplaces, and new social practices

chapter 6|12 pages

Forms of urban change

Nodes of knowledge-based networks as drivers of new metropolitan patterns in Southern Milan