Post-metropolitan geographies: Turin urban region in a multi-scalar perspective

Changes in social, economic, technological and spatial structure of urban systems are reflected in, and reinforced by, considerable changes in the way cities are governed and organised. The international debate highlights the possibilities for local areas - cities and urban regions - to promote autonomous development processes increasingly depend on the ability of actors. Changes in the spatial organization, that arise from the process of globalization, can be considered not only as territorial effects (or impacts), but also as mechanisms of “territorial redefinition”, that attest a change in the perception of territory and in the relations that society and individuals undertake with it. New levels of belonging and new territorial actions are defined. Territorial subdivisions and places of policies and interventions result multiplied. The joint action of these phenomena triggers processes of rescaling, reorganization and re-articulation of spatial scales involved in the transformation of government’s levels, which redefine the role and scale of territoriality and reinforce the importance of supra- and sub-national forms of territorial organization. Within this framework, the increasing importance of cities is taken as a paradigmatic example of the new role played by local and regional contexts in supra-local development processes. The innovation features introduced by urban and territorial policies is linked to the need of defining new forms of trans-jurisdictional governance at the metropolitan level. In this perspective, the paper has one main objective: contribute through a critical approach to the understanding of national and international debates on the variety and multiplicity of forms describing on-going urban and territorial dynamics. From an operational standpoint, the study aims to present and critically discuss the on-going dynamics characterising the urban region of Turin, and to document the interplay between networking processes and policy-making at different territorial scales.