The Role of Cities in Promoting Development

Since the end of the 1980s it has been clear urban questions had to be facedin connection with the different stages of industrialization and changing in businesssettlement needs had not to be explained as a deindustrialization process.This paper discusses with clarity the needs of third industrialization, dispellingany doubt as to misjudgements about post-industrialization or de-industrializationof urban economy. After having remembered the three stages of urbanization- i.e. concentration, suburbanization, decentralization, acknowledged by theinternational scientific community of geographers and equivalent to the threestages of industrialization - the gap in developing relation and service systemsunderpinning the economy of third industrialization in the towns of SouthernItaly, as well as the poor inclination southern urban systems show to developintegrated functional urban system are underlined. It will be highlighted that,contrary to what happens in the richest areas of our Country, Southern urbanareas are not much interrelated each other, and, as a result, weaker. With referenceto the urban question, the Author stresses the importance of innovation forthe economic system of third industrialization. This paper shows that the introductionof innovation - a competitive factor nowadays more and more essentialin times of market globalization and tough price competition - requires thedevelopment of a network of relations and businesses - also small ones - ableto offer new solutions to industry matters, within a framework of organizationalflexibility.«Organizational disintegration» and the need of «functional integration»,typical of the production chains of the third industrialization reveal that urbansystems - where the activities of contact, comparison, integration of information,as well as the adaptation of strategies, counselling, financial and technologicalsupport, planning, design and marketing can be carried out effectively- are an essential «place» to ensure the chain science-technology-productionmarkets.