Boundary Issues in New Metropolitan Cities

In the last decade, the focus of Italian politics aimed at the definition of metropolitan cities and independent associations of municipalities has become increasingly important. With regard to legislation, the issue has been considered since the 1990s, but despite several debates and legislative reforms there have been no real results. The only approach used was political-institutional, anchored in obsolete patterns and unable to deal with existing realities.Urban Planning and Urban Studies materialize the political choices in operational programs and control the evolution of urban and territorial transformations. These disciplines represent the starting point to reflect upon the process of identifying increasingly permeable boundaries. In this regard, the present work traces the current experiences of new metropolitan cities and the definition of ‘Liberi consorzi di Comuni’ in Sicily that are taking interesting forms and generating transformations and conflicts in the strategies of territorial government.