The Evolution of Urban Competitiveness in Italy from 1995 to 2013

Much has changed since Krugman argued that only firms compete to each other and not territories (1994); it is now generally accepted that countries, regions and cities do compete against each other and this competition is getting fiercer, especially since emerging countries and cities are growing faster, questioning the power of more developed urban realities. Since the economic crisis of 2009, Italy has been going through a difficult time, both in terms of financial and social; what type of impacts there have been from a competitive perspective at international and local scale? How Italian competitiveness has changed in the last twenty years? The aim of this paper1 is to describe the evolution of urban competitiveness in Italy from 1995 to 2013, referring it at provincial scale. The benchmarking has been done using a previous research as baseline and then updating it with the most recent data available. From the comparison seems clear that, despite the economic crisis, Italy tried to improve its competitiveness at international level by increasing its infrastructures and educational endowment, but the wider North-South divide has slowed down the growth of the country.