ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that the relationship between government/governance and citizenship in a post-metropolitan condition remains open and unsolved. The failure of traditional institutional solutions, together with the frailty of soft spaces/assemblages, encourage the design of non-ordinary and post-Euclidean solutions, looking at processes of regional urbanization as processes that also deeply challenge our ideas of democracy. Traditional metropolitan first rings, which have never really reached a condition of political and institutional constituency as such, are experiencing a new crisis of identity. During 2015, because of the implementation of a new law, a form of metropolitan government, the so-called 'citta metropolitan', has been taking shape: 25 years after the original introduction in Italy of metropolitan areas, the law, passed in 2014, has finally imposed a historical turn on the Italian institutional framework. Mayors are seen as a resource for a new democratic era, a possible remedy against the current political and institutional crisis, with their pragmatic willingness to address and solve problems.
