The role of networks in shaping urban and territorial policies

The metaphor of Network is currently one of the most popular ways of describing our contemporary society. Thanks to the employment of modern information technologies, in particular “internet” and “telecommunication networks”, people, private and public actors and places are in relationship worldwide. Networks can ignore boundaries, shorten distances, the “space of flows” goes side by side with the “space of places”. However, although some analysts have even foreseen the coming of a “flat world”, many signals give grounds for a different analysis: space is being deeply reshaped, geographical scales or levels are interlaced one another, underlining, thus, the strong relationships among actors and places. Therefore, it is important to highlight the quality and the effects of the relations among actors, territories and institutions. In particular the role of networks in shaping/influencing the urban and territorial policies.

All these processes raise many issues on which politicians, academics, representatives of “society” should be discussing: how do these networks interact with policies occurring at different territorial levels (local, regional, national)? how are they taken into account by policy makers? what are the network policies implemented or which need to be activated in order to increase the value of specificities and potentials of different territories? have these networks effects on real life, or are they just "representations"?