Between Knowledge and Creative Economy: The Milan Urban Region as a Spatial Interface

After decades of intensive research focused on the relation between economic growth/society/territory (through dominant figures such as “one company town”, “new industrial space”, “industrial districts”, and then the “post-fordist” scenario), this issue has been recently neglected in urban and regional studies. For instance, under the blanket of a generic “post-industrial transition”, and assuming the existence of new “knowledge and creative urban economies”. Against the backdrop of the need to develop a theoretical framework through which the nexus of knowledge and creative economy/urban change can be conceived, this contribution explores the different ways in which innovative productive activities (material and immaterial) and workplace “narratives”, as well as contemporary public policies (if any, at different scales), establish roots in specific spatial and socio-political contexts. Within this framework, the reflection focuses on contemporary phenomena of knowledge and creative economy in the Milan urban region.