ABSTRACT
The way people and economic activities organize in space has been changing over time.
Improvements in communication technologies, large and growing movements of people
and goods, and economic development processes have generated an enlargement of the
spaces where people live and work. These changes facilitated suburbanization processes
and an increasing integration of cities with their surrounding hinterland. The emerging
spaces where people live and work and where the bulk of economic interdependencies
takes place is referred to in the literature as “functional regions”. Among functional
regions, the “functional urban areas” (FUAs) are characterized by the presence of one
or more urban centres of different sizes and economic importance.
