Turin's industrial vocation confirmed by EU study

(ANSA) - BRUSSELS, APR 19 - Despite being now far from its past as an 'automobile mono-culture' dominated by Fiat, Turin is still a city with a strong industrial vocation.
    Manufacturing, and in particular the automotive and high-tech sectors, continue to play an important role in the economy of the metropolitan city, according to the Mista project, carried out by the ESPON European cooperation programme, which specializes in regional analyses.
    The study, which analyses the recent past and future of metropolitan industries in the EU, highlights the challenges linked to the restructuring of the economic base in large and medium-sized European urban centres.
    In this analysis, the case of Turin stands out.
    "It is rather particular," says Valeria Fedeli, a lecturer in urban planning and policy at the Politecnico University of Milan, "because it is linked to the great city-factory, which has disappeared".
    With respect to Milan, Turin has suffered more due to the abandonment of industry and its ancillary chains of production.
    The 2007 financial crisis hit the Piedmont city hard, generating "further stress in an already fragile manufacturing industry which survived on the total dependence on Fiat", say the researchers, preventing "the abandonment of its industrial vocation in favour of an aspiring global city".
    The study also highlights that the construction, logistics and public-service sectors, identified as one of the main employment growth engines in other European cities, have not reached a similar importance in Turin.
    "Apart from some data that show a significant crisis," explains Fedeli, "research has mapped out planning areas that show an attempt to mix the service and manufacturing sectors, with some successful results".
    In other words, production can still need the city as a place that links the product and experience.
    In these conditions, manufacturing may still find new life in the city and help it emerge from stagnation.
    Turin, the researchers write, has endured the difficulties on the part of local actors to cope with the process of de-industrialization and transformation of the city's economic base, which has impeded its capacity to innovate.
    This must be the starting point to develop an adequate industrial strategy for the area.
    In particular, the study underlines the need for a stronger alliance between Turin and its neighboring towns, which are suffering economic decline, as well as local collaboration between research and business to develop innovative ideas and build strategic alliances.
    This must be flanked, finally, by a strong strategy at a national level to support highly internationalized sectors, such as automotive and aerospace, whose dynamics elude the capacity of the local context, and thus reinforce their roots in the local area. (ANSA).