Ricerc@Sapienza

Since the early 1990s, urban studies have been engaged with the issue of scale, so much so that the ‘urban question’ (Castells 1972) has also become a ‘scale question’, which means “systematically rethinking the relations between urban spaces and supra-urban processes of capital accumulation, political regulation and social struggle” (Brenner 2000: 361). In particular, the issue of scale draws attention to debates regarding changes in metropolitan areas and the role of political rescaling (Brenner 2004).

This editorial presents the reasons why the metropolitan scale is gaining momentum as a concept, as well as a process taking place in the real world, and considers its definition. The main questions and theories used in research on the metropolitan scale are introduced, followed by the research findings of the different papers in this special issue. By analysing the metropolitan scale in its economic, spatial and political dimensions, it has been possible to detect both similar and different kinds and degrees of development, and to focus on their determinants.