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The two events of the economic crisis and pandemic are intertwined with the development trajectories of national and international cities. Far from experiencing their own demise and decline (Glaeser, 1998), cities are experiencing their own triumph in the 21st century (Glaeser, 2012; Hall and Burdett, 2021; United Nations, 2018). Countries, therefore, grow from their cities, and yet not all cities seem to be equipped in the same way. Our country has identified fourteen metropolitan cities as a reference for the development of territories. Metropolitan cities differ in many respects and it, therefore, seems legitimate to ask whether they are all equally capable of growth or whether some of them have a better chance of leading the country’s development. It is useful to place such a research question in appropriate theoretical frameworks. The first identifies the scale and variety of cities’ human, material and immaterial resources as the key aspect of their development. Recent studies have highlighted how concentration in a limited number of cities is the natural consequence of the complexity of the technological and economic processes underlying growth. In the US case, the ten most innovative metropolitan cities account for slightly less than a quarter of the total population and realize 48% of the patents and a third of the gross domestic product (Moretti, 2012). Highly complex activities «are disproportionately concentrated in a few large cities compared to less complex activities»(Balland et al., 2020). Concentration, therefore, is inextricably linked to the development of innovative activities that can subsequently become engines of growth. Research still …