Italian metropolitan cities. A quantitative analysis aimed at the implementation of governance and innovation policies

The paper analyses the metropolitan system in Italy. The debate on this matter has been going on for 60 years with peaks in specific moments. Aim of the paper, is to verify the adequacy of the system of 15 metropolitan cities in terms of relevance and weight on national and international scale. The paper begins from the analysis of the backgrounds and of the actual state of the research on the metropolitan issue. A second section analyses the metropolitan cities in Italy in terms of signifi cance on an international scale and in terms of system of rules and functions. The third part identifies the main sectors influencing metropolitan cities stating it in specific and transversal sectors. The paper deepens the specific sectors using a system of indicators and statistical analyses bringing to the computation of indices of metropolisation. These indexes outline more precisely the belonging of the Italian cities to the metropolitan category confirming the hypothesis that 15 metropolitan cities is a too large sample.