Located around the urban areas, rather than on the city’s edge, the peri-urban is normally conceived as an hybrid territory that is difficult to define and even more to identify geographically. Starting with a brief summary of the most important previous studies on the subject, the article offers then an analytical interpretation of the periurban phenomenon and shows the results obtained through its empirical application to the Lombardy territory. The aim of the study is in fact to locate the periurban territory in Lombardy region and to describe the social composition of its population.
Keywords: Periurban, Urbanization Process, Metropolitan Area, Social Morphology, Ecological Indicator, GIS.