La conurbazione centro adriatica abruzzese: una piccola "metropoli" di rango sovra regionale

The incomplete reform of local authorities (Law 56/2014), identifiable with the whole Delrio’s project, by now completely unworkable, other than inadequate under a variety of aspects, has not delineated new and effective models of governance, useful in terms of representation, care and management of strategic issues at the scale of Area Vasta. The reform has not restructured the form of government of intermediate authorities, nor has it defined, from a spatial and a functional perspective, their appropriate ‘pertinent dimension’. In addition, the reform has reiterated the choice of the Metropolitan Cities operated in 1990, hastily assimilating their borders to those of the provinces, confirming the highly unbalanced territorial situations and denying the metropolitan representativeness to some cities with functional supra-regional rank. Under this last condition is the conurbation of Pescara-Chieti, which is presented here as a case study.