Abstract

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