Urban Attractiveness, Agglomeration Economies, and the Energy Transition in Italian Metropolitan Cities: Preface and Statistical Analysis

Italian metropolitan cities are both the primary sites of agglomeration economies and the most exposed territories to the distributional consequences of the energy transition. This preface to the 2023 strategic report Towards the Society of the Future, developed by The European House – Ambrosetti in collaboration with Edison S.p.A., argues that the shift toward a more sustainable economic and energy model cannot be assessed independently of the spatial and institutional structures through which it is mediated: metropolitan governance capacity, territorial inequalities between city cores and surrounding regions, and the uneven distribution of productive and export capacity across Italian metropolitan areas. The document, presented here in English translation alongside the Executive Summary and the report's central statistical chapter, introduces original empirical data on 14 Italian metropolitan cities: their demographic weight relative to their regions (2023), their contribution to regional GDP (2021), and their export performance (2022, in billions of euros). The analysis, drawn from new opinion polling and primary empirical research by The European House – Ambrosetti, documents a striking concentration of population, economic output, and export capacity in metropolitan cores, against a backdrop of persistent regional disparities. The preface situates this evidence within the framework of Society 5.0, a human-centred development paradigm that places wellbeing, sustainability, and inclusiveness at the core of the urban transition, and argues that energy infrastructure is not a technical add-on to metropolitan governance but its constitutive enabling condition. Cities that lack robust collective goods (transport, housing, public services, research infrastructure) cannot convert agglomeration advantages into equitable and sustainable development. The case of Italy shows that metropolitan attractiveness without redistributive governance produces reversed redistribution: opportunities concentrated where prices make permanence structurally difficult. English translation of my Italian Preface to: "Verso la società del futuro. Come vivremo, lavoreremo, ci relazioneremo e le energie della trasformazione", open access strategic report by The European House – Ambrosetti / Edison S.p.A., 2023, with Executive Summary and selected figures. 50 pages, 14 figures, original data.