ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers the result of a large research effort produced by a network of scholars in different Italian universities interested in delivering a significant output for both the scientific and policy communities about new ways to describe the discontinuity in time and space in significant urban areas across Italy. It explores the potential and appropriateness of the post-metropolitan space in dealing with emerging societal challenges. The book discusses urbanoid galaxy to open the way for interpreting forms/processes with a dynamic nature that do not correspond linearly to different levels of cityness. It provides arguments concerning the need to reframe the ideas of the city accumulated over the last century, to acknowledge new/old urban forms and forms of urbanity taking place. The book considers national-regional portrait and enables the measurement of peculiarities of the Italian case toward the planetary dimension of urban change.
