Abstract

In the last decade, a new Italian policy was implemented to integrate the territorial services addressed to homelessness. The paper aims to investigate how the integrated strategic model favoured by the policy was interpreted at the urban scale and how different territorial governance was reproduced or transformed. The analysis concerns the cities of Bologna and Milan, and it is based on semi-structured interviews, focus groups and social network analysis. The combination of qualitative and network data permits the analysis of the governance structure and the processual perspectives of public actors and Third Sector organizations. The results show a failure of the national policy in triggering a standardised morphogenesis of the different territorial governance. However, territorial systems also converge in identifying the elements necessary to initiate morphogenesis, to which they do not oppose an ideological rejection.