The author begins his own reflections by questioning the specifics of the 1990s. The answer is sought in a review of the trend of advanced economies, including the Italian one, identifying the salient aspects of the transition that marked that decade. The central part of the essay is devoted to the discovery by sociologists "of the archipelago of industrial districts", local societies in which economic, political and cultural aspects are congruent. Just sociology, oriented to connect the different aspects of phenomena, to grasp the social facts formed in space, to read the root of
economic phenomena in social dynamics, has contributed to the development of interesting interpretive keys of the districts. Always with reference to the analysis of local development, in the second part the author resumes the theme of the city as a local system, resuming the concepts of global-city and global city region.
Keywords: Local development, industrial districts, global-city, global city region