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Abstract
The center-periphery metaphor is an important element in a number of intellectual traditions in urban geography. From the late 1950s studies of the sociospatial structure of Rome, Italy, viewed the city in terms of a socially and politically powerful center producing an exploited and subjugated periphery of inferior housing and services inhabited by the city’s most recent immigrants. This paper examines the use of the center-periphery metaphor with respect to the controversy that has arisen among leading Italian urbanists over its continuing applicability and in terms of the most recent census data and empirical studies of Roman sociospatial structure. The central theme is whether center-periphery is a “fruitful” as opposed to a “misleading” metaphor in the Roman case.