Introduction

This introductory chapter has two main objectives: (i) to provide a general overview of the theoretical and phenomenological framework from which the book draws its inspiration; and (ii) to concisely describe its content, 19 chapters grouped in 4 thematic sections. The entire book is focused on the Southern Europe, probably one of the densest and long-lastly area of urbanization on the planet, characterized by a solid network of metropolitan areas but also by deep and rooted spatial differences – inequalities in some cases – in terms of wealth, vulnerability, well-being, demographic and socio-economic structures and dynamics. In introducing and describing the sections and the chapters of the book, particularly attention is devoted to the analysis of the main changes occurred in the last decades in Southern Europe, including the implications of extraordinary shocks like the Great Recession and the more recent pandemic crisis. The responses that place-based policies are called upon to implement in order to counter the most problematic and critical aspects of these major changes and transformations are therefore discussed. The scale at which these processes are to be analysed receives particular care as well as the relevance of space as a crucial variable for correctly interpreting typically multi-scalar, multi-dimensional and, often, spatially dependent processes.