THE CONTRIBUTION OF RETAIL TRADE TO THE INTEGRATED REGENERATION OF ITALIAN TOWN CENTER

The identity of a territory is generally perceived on the basis of place awareness in terms of experiential and relational trends created within urban areas connoted by centuries of activities and relationships. Trade in its various forms concurs in delineating the living standards of a territory, seeing as a distributional system structured upon small and medium size enterprises besides producing wealth and employment, safeguards a precious network of social relations, improves standards of living, citizen safety, as well as solidarity, social cohesion and sense of belonging to a community. Urban areas, constituting a resource for the economy of towns and cities have to act in synergy with public and private sectors, envisaging forms of funding to incentivize new businesses and the requalification of existing businesses, in order to create alternative niche markets to those of large scale structures.