ABSTRACT
According to a consolidated geo-historical pattern, Milan represents the core of a highly integrated metropolitan agglomeration situated at the centre of the polycentric urban system of ‘Padania’. In the course of the centuries – and especially since the industrial age, as this pattern turned into the foundation for Milan’s role as ‘Italy’s economic capital’ (Dalmasso, 1972) – the area has developed strong complementary relations between the central city, with its superior ‘metropolitan’ functions, and its peripheral territorial systems, featuring relatively autonomous paths of socio-economic development.
