Urban regions are replacing
cities on the international economic scene, bringing out new
power relations between territories and playing an unprecedented
role in the territorial reorganization of capitalism. This is
not a neutral process, and it contributes on the one hand to
creating new spaces, harbingers of conflicts and imbalances, and
on the other to fueling a new territorial protagonism and new
political dynamics.
The Imagine research project, produced by the EU's ESPON study
programme, specialized in regional analysis, and under the lead
of the Politecnico University in Milan, highlights the processes
of regionalization going on in the territory between Milan and
Bologna, with a focus on the impact of the high-speed corridor
on the area's social and economic dynamics.
The picture that emerges is in some ways contradictory: the
social and economic processes, which expand and integrate on a
regional level, are associated with now obsolete governance
mechanisms.
The snapshot that the researchers have taken is that of a
productive, densely populated and interconnected region,
organized into a poly-centric structure which can count on an
offering of highly qualified infrastructure.
It is a region rich in strategic regional and urban functions
(universities, research and development hubs, airports,
exhibition areas) and based on the interaction between the urban
Milanese region and the poly-centric system of the medium-sized
cities of the Via Emilia corridor.
At an institutional level, the researchers observe, there is a
mixture of centralities and networks, with a metropolitan
governance that is trying to bolster territorial cohesion, while
new functional actors are emerging which could generate
innovative urban scenarios.
The territory, further, shares common environmental challenges,
if one considers the intense urbanization, the high level of
atmospheric pollutants and the hydro-geological risks that
characterize the region.
Among the obstacles to regionalization, the researchers identify
growing regional differentiation, due to differing trends of
economic development; an erosion of common goods such as the
environment, put under pressure by economic and urbanization
dynamics; and also a fragmentation and lack of coordination on
an urban-regional level.
On this last point, the study underscores how the fragmentation
of governance also impacts economic functions, producing
competition and duplications in the supply of goods at a local
level and affecting the competitiveness of firms on
international markets.
There are many areas for intervention identified by the
researchers that suggest: regulating functions organized on a
trans-territorial scale, like logistics, mobility, utilities,
and the environment; recognizing the role of middle-sized cities
which are suffering the growing attractiveness of the
metropolitan areas; integrating the peripheral and mountain
areas in the face of the tendency to concentrate functions in
the metropolitan areas; and considering the Milan-Bologna area
as a significant bio-region for a more sustainable integration
of the natural system with the urban one.
photo: a bird's eye view of Bologna
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