L'encaix de l'Alt Penedès en el context metropolità i català

The article presents an economic and territorial characterisation of the Alt Penedès region in relation to the rest of the metropolitan area of Barcelona and to Catalonia as a whole, although it also makes comparisons with other European areas. Within a spatial framework in which imbalances in terms of income and wealth are relatively insignificant, the Alt Penedès maintains an unemployment rate below the Catalan average and an economic structure clearly differentiated from those of the rest of the metropolitan area. The specific weight and strategic nature of agriculture, industrial activity specialising in the transformation sectors, mainly food, and the lesser development of tertiary activities are significant constituent elements of the Alt Penedès economic basis. Although metropolitan development is less pronounced here, the increase in workforce mobility during the five-year period between 1991 and 1996 reveals the growing functional integration of the region’s municipalities into the dynamics of metropolitan Barcelona. An integration that must be fostered on the basis of improved infrastructures and of exploitation of the potentials, on different scales, offered by the metropolitan area as a whole.