Mela and Davico (1998) report reasons connected with the situation of current housing
(too small or of poor quality; too expensive; the impossibility to satisfy in the central
municipality the will of becoming owners) as the main grounds for moving out of Turin
municipality. Particularly, couples with children, together with families belonging to the
working class, are the ones who live the worst situations in the Turin municipality (Occelli
and Prizzon, 1995).
Finally, Mela and Davico (1998) assess that a high percentage of residents in the ring areas
keep on working, studying or at least going more than once a week Turin municipality.
If we now consider all previous information and simultaneously take into account both
the municipality and the ring area, we can summarise the evolution of the Turin
municipality and its entire province in three distinct phases, also experienced by other
Italian and European cities (Vitali, 1985; Petsimeris, 1995; Conforti and Mela, 1995).
During the first phase, which in the case of Turin started at the same time as its
industrialization and lasted until the mid 1960s, both the city and its surroundings gained
population, with high and positive migration flows, stronger for the inner municipality
than other counties. Later on, in the second phase, the growth levels for the city began
slowing down, remaining still positive and strong only for the surroundings (1965-1974).
The urban area expanded therefore outside the city (Martinotti, 1993), and people began
choosing to live in the suburbs instead of the crowded, relatively expensive and polluted
centre. In other words, the spatial definition of the urban area had changed, also
favoured by the improvement in transportation for passengers and goods, which in turn
allowed decentralization (Yapa et al., 1971). Indeed, extended opportunities of
commuting decrease the need of coincidence between the place of work and the place
of residence, leading to possible spatial separation of these two life-domains.
The last phase of so called de-urbanization, is characterized by negative net migration
flows of the Turin municipality and low but still positive flows for the surroundings.
As a result, at the beginning of 2001, the population of Turin city approximately
amounted to 900,000 inhabitants, which corresponds to more than a half of the
population of Turin’s entire metropolitan area (consisting of about 1.6 million), and to two
fifths of the province (2.2 million).
This complex history plays an important role also on other demographic components,
for example trends in fertility and in nuptiality. The next section focuses on these
elements, trying to disentangle the effects of the coexistence of different behavioural
models, of changes during the time span and of period effects.

Demographic Trends
In Figure 6 the decrease in number of births during the 1970s seems to be very strong.
During the decade the number of births halved, shifting from 17 thousand in 1971 to 9
thousand in 1980. Subsequently, it remained almost stable, and nowadays (in 2000) it
amounts to more than 7 thousand. At the same time, the total amount of the population