Italia di mezzo, the research that places the Italian province at the centre

There are Italian territories that do not fit into the categories with which, in recent years, we have become accustomed to reading the country. They are not the large metropolitan areas, at the centre of economic flows and innovative phenomena. Nor are they the inner areas, the villages, the uplands or mountain territories that have received renewed scientific and political attention in order to counter depopulation. They are medium-sized and small cities, dispersed urbanisations, towns and scattered houses, inhabited countryside, production spaces, industrial sheds, networks of roads and railways. This is what the research group led by Arturo Lanzani, of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of Politecnico di Milano, calls “Italia di mezzo”.

One of the results of the research was the book Italia di mezzo. Prospettive per la provincia in transizione, edited by Arturo Lanzani for Donzelli in 2024. In the book, this part of the country is described as a plurality of contexts that are “difficult to define and explain”, while apparently immediate to recognise, even visually. “‘Italian province’ is an expression that is apparently easy to understand, but difficult to define,” Lanzani writes.

The definition arises partly by exclusion: Italia di mezzo includes what cannot be traced back either to metropolitan areas or to inner areas. But the research does not stop at this negative perimeter. The aim is to recognise the characteristics, differences and potential of territories that cover around 50% of the national surface area and where 55% of the Italian population lives. Italia di mezzo is, to take up the chapters of the 2024 book, the municipality of Mondolfo in the province of Pesaro and Urbino, central Brianza and the Domitian-Phlegraean coast in Campania, Frosinone and Lomellina, the Riviera del Brenta and the mountains of Massa-Carrara that are victims of extractivism, the urbanised area along the banks of the River Serio and Salento.

The starting point is also a political and cultural observation. Territorial cohesion policies have often worked on the two main poles of large cities and inner areas. In between remains a substantial part of the country, the subject of sectoral interventions, from agriculture to logistics, from high-speed rail to renewable energy plants, but rarely observed as a territory as a whole. Urban and economic policies specifically designed for this territory are very rare: much more often, policies designed for large cities are transferred here. With poor results: “for example the fifteen-minute city, which cannot exist in the province,” explains Federico Zanfi, a faculty member at DAStU involved in the research.

This is the framework for the PRIN 2022 project Italia di mezzo. Designing the urban-territorial transition, funded by MUR. The Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of Politecnico di Milano served as coordinator, with Arturo Lanzani as scientific coordinator, together with the University of Naples Federico II, Politecnico di Torino and the University of Basilicata.

The work carried out as part of the GRINS project, funded by the PNRR, was also intertwined with the PRIN research, making it possible to explore the articulation of the country not only according to the traditional distinction between North, Centre and South, but also through the differences between metropolitan areas, inner areas and intermediate territories.

The project develops three main contributions: new territorial representations, critical monitoring of policies and projects already launched or under way, and new images of the future starting from exploratory and exemplary projects. From this perspective, urban planning research combines different tools: quantitative analysis, spatialised data, cartographies, direct observation, interviews and fieldwork.

“Doing research means moving between quantitative analysis, cartography and direct observation on the ground,” explains Arturo Lanzani. “What distinguishes urban planning research from others is the constant use of spatialised data, at different thresholds and levels.”

The work of the urban planner therefore proceeds through successive approximations. It starts from a national scale, with data on a municipal or census basis; then moves to an intermediate scale, capable of reading physical, social and settlement forms; and finally reaches the close-up account of places, practices and concrete situations, also through interviews with citizens.

Italia di mezzo is not a homogeneous block. It includes dynamic territories in the North East, in the Emilia, Veneto and Lombardy areas, and parts of Tuscany; but also contexts that show more evident signs of decline, such as the Valle del Sacco, in the Frosinone area. In both cases, according to the research, the problem does not concern only economic or demographic indicators. It also concerns the capacity to build an image of the future.

Some common traits recur. These territories played a decisive role in the economic and social development of twentieth-century Italy: they were places of manufacturing, twentieth-century agriculture, land reclamation infrastructure, industrial areas, schools, libraries and distributed social services. They are also territories where the family home and self-promoted real estate development have represented an important element of social and economic emancipation.

At the same time, they are affected by environmental and territorial criticalities: land consumption, production and logistics infrastructure, large plants serving external economies, high-impact forms of agriculture. Growth and development, when present, do not necessarily coincide with a sustainable or governed trajectory. “These are territories that host or receive the infrastructure of Italy’s ecological and digital transition, such as data centres, logistics warehouses and ground-mounted solar plants, but that also bear their social and environmental consequences”, explain Lanzani and Zanfi. “They are also territories that often lack the technical or political skills, or the governance mechanisms, to guide these major transformations and the private investments that follow them,” add the faculty members.

For this reason, the research insists on the need for specific policies. It is not enough to adapt models created for metropolises, nor to treat these territories as variants of inner areas. Tools are needed that can recognise their social, economic, settlement-related and environmental specificities. “The research proposes design lines, rather than ready-made technical solutions,” Zanfi observes.

The first editorial outcome of the pathway is the volume Italia di mezzo. Prospettive per la provincia in transizione, already mentioned. The book builds interpretive frameworks, geographies and themes: a taxonomy of Italia di mezzo, three territorial itineraries and a series of in-depth studies on schools, the family home, built heritage, railway mobility, manufacturing, agriculture, landscapes of the energy transition and peri-urban food.

This first volume is accompanied by two editorial series. The first, Ritratti dell’Italia di mezzo, offers close readings of specific territories. Seven volumes have currently been published, with an eighth in production: each volume works on maps, themes, stories of specific places or situations, with photographic essays and interviews. Each volume also has different authors: they recount Lake Maggiore, Ciociaria, the Bergamo lowlands, Lomellina, the Costa Smeralda and the coast of Olbia, the Grosseto Maremma and the lower Po Valley.

The second series, dedicated to the themes of Italia di mezzo more than to its territories, explores four cross-cutting issues: housing stock and family homes, infrastructure, manufacturing and agricultural production and the bread and olive supply chains, with attention to the transformations and vulnerabilities of the territories.

The work was also presented through the Italia di mezzo cycle of events hosted at DAStU’s CRAFT laboratory from 21 January to 13 February 2026. The events offered an exhibition, seminars, film screenings and a final study day, transforming analytical materials, data, images and reflections into a public experience. The exhibition presented thematic maps, excerpts from interviews, infographics and a photographic campaign dedicated to the territories investigated.

Research on Italia di mezzo does not end with the PRIN. In the group’s intention, the two editorial series are conceived as an open work, capable of welcoming other scholars interested in representing and investigating these territories. Other territorial portraits and a further thematic volume dedicated to energy infrastructure, in particular renewable energy plants and their impact on territories, are already in progress.

The future of this line of research therefore concerns the way in which Italia di mezzo may enter public debate and policy agendas. What is at stake is not only descriptive, because it is a matter of understanding which policies for housing, energy, mobility, production and services can be conceived starting from these territories, without importing imaginaries and tools built elsewhere.

The challenge is to bring back to the centre a part of the country that played a decisive role in Italian development in the twentieth century and that today finds itself in a critical phase, not necessarily losing, but often lacking a shared representation of its own future.