The Metropolitan City of Turin is a metropolitan city in the Piedmont region, Italy. Its capital is the city ofTurin. It replaced the Province of Turin and comprises the city of Turin and 315 other municipalities. It was first created by the reform of local authorities and then established by the Law 56/2014. It has been officially operative since 1 January 2015. The MetropolitanCity of Turin is headed by the metropolitan mayor and by the metropolitan council. Since 5 June 2016, Chiara Appendino has served as the mayor of the capital city, succeeding Piero Fassino. It is the largest Metropolitan City of Italy and the only one to border a foreign state.
Metropolitan area
It has an area of, and a total population of. There are 316 comuni in the metropolitan area - the most of any province or metropolitan city in Italy. The province with the second highest number of comuni is Cuneo with 250.
The Metropolitan City currently has a large number of rail and road work sites. Although this activity has increased as a result of the 2006 Winter Olympics, parts of it had long been planned. Some of the work sites deal with general roadworks to improve traffic flow, such as underpasses and flyovers, but two projects are of major importance and will radically change the shape of the city of Turin. One is the Spina Centrale project which includes the doubling of a major railway crossing the city, the Turin-Milan railway locally known as Passante Ferroviario di Torino. The railroad previously ran in a trench, which will now be covered by a major boulevard running from North to South of Turin, in a central position along the city. Porta Susa, on this section, will become Turin's main station to substitute the terminus of Porta Nuova with a through station. Other important stations are Stura, Rebaudengo, Lingotto and Madonna di Campagna railway stations, though not all of them belong to the layout of the Spina Centrale. The other major project is the construction of a subway line based on the VAL system, known as Metrotorino. This project is expected to continue for years and to cover a larger part of the city, but its first phase was finished in time for the 2006 Olympic Games, inaugurated on 4 February 2006 and opened to the public the day after. The first leg of the subway system linked the nearby town of Collegno with Porta Susa in Turin's city centre. On 4 October 2007 the line was extended to Porta Nuova and then, in March 2011, to Lingotto. A new extension of the so-called Linea 1 is expected in the near future, reaching both Rivoli in the Western belt of Turin and Piazza Bengasi in the Southeast side of the city. Furthermore, an alleged Linea 2 is in the pipeline and it is supposed to cross Turin from North to South. The area has an international airport known as Caselle International AirportSandro Pertini, located in Caselle Torinese, about from the centre of Turin and connected to the city by a railway service and a bus service. As of 2010 also a bicycle sharing system, the ToBike, is operational. The metropolitan area is served by Turin metropolitan railway service. .
The new Metro municipalities, giving large urban areas the administrative powers of a province, are conceived for improving the performance of local administrations and to slash local spending by better coordinating the municipalities in providing basic services and environment protection. In this policy framework, the Mayor of Turin is designated to exercise the functions of Metropolitan mayor, presiding over a Metropolitan Council formed by 18 mayors of municipalities within the Metro municipality. The first Metropolitan Council of the City was elected on 12 October 2014:
