Traiettorie di sviluppo economico in Italia: il caso dell’Umbria

The trajectory of territorial development which has taken place in recentdecades in the Umbria region – one of the regions of so called ‘Third Italy’– has deeply transformed its economic landscape. A number of processes ofterritorial coalescence have led to the formation of a few clusters ofcontiguous communes (local systems) whose final outcome was a form ofurban polycentrism. After having identified the new local systems (cities orurban systems) emerged in the past decades, the paper conducts acomparative analysis of the economic performances and structures of theseven main urban systems of the Umbria Region. The main result seems tobe that the local patterns of development are characterized by a markeddegree of dissimilarity. Something which needs to be investigated bothbecause of the theoretical questions it raises and for its policy implications.