Strategic planning approaches for the reconfiguration of intermediate centers and new relational perspectives

The contribution explores the role of small and medium-sized cities within different territorial systems, highlighting their strategic-functional importance as intermediary contexts between metropolitan and inner areas. Through a critical review of the literature, of the various research reports and the analysis of the characteristics of recent experiences in the Italian context, the strategic planning procedures implemented by and for intermediary contexts and their relational extensions are investigated. In this perspective, the evidence indicates that through strategic planning approaches it is possible to proceed to different processes of systematic reconfiguration of intermediate contexts acting simultaneously in their exogenous-endogenous dimensions.