For more than 160 years, Italy’s economic geography has been defined by a clear divide: the industrialized North and the less developed South. Since the country’s unification in 1861, manufacturing strength, exports, and innovation have traditionally been concentrated in regions such as Lombardy, Veneto, and Emilia–Romagna.
Recently, however, new data suggests that in certain industrial districts the pattern is beginning to shift. For the first time since national unification, several productive clusters in Southern Italy are performing better than some comparable districts in the North and Center of the country.
