The national settlements system of Italy.

"This paper is a concise introductory account of the Italian urban settlement system. It takes up and develops basic topics and characteristic aspects of the 'components' of the system, ie the communes,... the relationships linking these components, as well as the organization and evolution of the system." The author discusses commune attributes, including size, urban function, location, division of labor, and demographic behavior. Consideration is then given to the relationships among communes such as population exchange and communication flows. The data are from a variety of published sources and deal primarily with the 1970s.