摘要：Abstract If the Labour Market Areas consist of «territorial units identified by a set of adjacent municipalities approximated with travel-to-work daily commuting flows», the change in the number of municipalities that make them up, can be considered an indicator of the changes in the levels of socio-economic interaction within the LMAs. In particular, in the hierarchical-functional LMAs, where the daily commute to work moves from the periphery of the system toward its center, the variation in the number of municipalities that are part of it can be interpreted as the result of a change in the attractiveness of the economic and employment level of the center for its immediate geographical surroundings. Following any changes in the spatial configuration of the 21 local labour systems of the major Italian urban areas and crossing data with that relating to demographic and economic level, an interpretive framework can be built of the evolutionary dynamics of these metropolitan areas and the role they occupy within the national urban system.
