Territory Matters: A Regional Portrait of Florence and Tuscany

The picture outlined in this chapter is a portrait of Tuscany. Tuscany is a well-known region of Italy, rich in history, commonly considered a country of art and culture. Tuscany is an ancient urban region, a country of autonomous cities, proud of its identity. The scenario which is constitutive of the urban in Tuscany nowadays can be defined as a shift from a “mode” supported by dynamics of centralization to one featured by a decentralization process of functions, new forms of economic activities, the emergence of a new urban–rural interplay and the emergence of different lifestyles. The most recent transformations and the economic crisis have profoundly changed the region: the processes of urbanization have consumed land and natural resources; the crisis has affected the economy and the traditional industrial districts; in larger cities there have been increasing manifestations of old and new poverty; social and environmental conflicts have severely worsened the political climate. At the same time in cities and urbanized areas, a new energy for change is emerging, movements that fight for the quality of life and the right to the city, innovative proposals in the field of social solidarity, shared dwelling and the ecological conversion of the economy. These changes could be labelled as post-metropolitan, borrowing Soja’s suggestion (Soja, 2011). The post-metropolitan transition in Tuscany is analyzed with reference to the role of geo-historical matrices in determining a polynuclear pattern of settlements and a reticular organization of inter-institutional cooperation. These phenomena are interpreted through the categories of physicality and path-dependence. The study highlights the regionalization of urbanization, according to the hypothesis of Soja, though in a different historical and geographical context.