Advanced technology, new spatial dynamic and urban competition: a procedure for evaluating of the italian districts' competitive potential

The global change of economy and production determined by the impact of advanced communication technology are re-launching the role of cities and regions from local to global scale. Global competition among cities induces new spatial dynamic, modifying the traditional territorial hierarchies and concentrating the management of economic, technological and cultural relationships in a few metropolitan areas. Starting from this assumption, this paper gives a contribution for setting up strategies targeted to the promotion of competitive take-off of Italian districts †"considered as the most suitable reference unit for this work†" closely connected to the strategic resources of each district. In order to pursue this aim, the research work has a twofold goal: - to identify the strategic resources enabling regions to gain a competitive advantage at different territorial levels (international, national, local); - to evaluate the Italian districts' competitive potential in the international, national and local context. The research work deals with the problem of the international competition among cities with a focus on the territorial aspect of the competition. Therefore, in order to set up a procedure for determining the competitive potential of the Italian districts, we consider apart from variables related to economy and production, also variables related to infrastructure equipment, settlement's quality, human resources, etc. The main finding of the research work is a subdivision of the 95 Italian “districts” into five classes, according to their present or potential role in the global, national or local competition.