Main Streets or Latent Corridors? Exploring the Significance of Weak Ties in Suburban Contexts

The ongoing debate on proximity-based planning has produced a wide range of methods for assessing access to everyday services. Yet, most of these approaches remain centred on what can be reached within a given time threshold, while giving less attention to the spatial structure that makes some streets more strategically relevant than others. This paper argues that, particularly in suburban areas, streets should be evaluated for their structural strategic value. Special attention should be given to corridors that connect weakly linked sub-systems, as they could support future proximity-oriented interventions. Building on recent research about weak ties in spatial systems and the Kemeny-based centrality measure (KBC), this paper proposes a simple diagnostic approach to bridgeness, developed within the framework of the DUT-funded EMC2 project. The aim is not to compare alternative bridgeness metrics, but to examine whether high-KBC segments in a suburban area already coincide with local functions, or instead reveal structurally important yet underused corridors. The approach is tested in Turano, a suburban area of Massa, Italy, located within the wider Versilia conurbation. Using a road-centreline representation and a verified inventory of amenities, the study investigates the relationship between bridging structure and the distribution of Points of Interest through the concepts of alignment and mismatch. The results offer an exploratory but operational framework for distinguishing between corridors that already act as local functional anchors and latent spatial assets whose potential is not yet reflected in the current distribution of services. The paper concludes that bridgeness can provide a useful additional layer for proximity-oriented planning, particularly when combined with reliable local data and with broader assessments of walkability, public-space quality, and functional needs.