The 1966 flood did not stop the expansion of the city, which continued to develop under the pressure of population growth. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the urbanisation of the areas of Novoli, Rifredi, Coverciano, Bellariva, Gavinana, Soffiano and Isolotto was consolidated. There was a similar growth in some towns bordering the city, such as Scandicci and Sesto Fiorentino. Florence was now thrust into a metropolitan dimension, widely transcending the boundaries of its municipal territory.
Growth sometimes occurred in a haphazard manner, mainly in the still vacant peripheral areas that were occupied by sprawling developments.
In recent decades, however, experiments have been attempted. In the former Fiat area in Novoli, for example, after the abandonment of industrial activities at the beginning of the 1980s, plans began to be drawn up for a new section of the city which, despite modifications and reconsiderations, sought to achieve a high level of quality by combining residential housing with a park and service functions. Within the old city centre, where there has been a progressive reduction in the resident population, the last decades of the twentieth century saw the most important projects limited to the renovation and reuse of existing complexes.
An extended metropolitan vision which sees the cities of Florence, Prato and Pistoia together, but which is still struggling to take shape, has emerged in recent years.
On 17 December 1982, the Historic Centre of Florence entered the UNESCO World Heritage List.
At the beginning of the 1990s, Florence’s city plan set the goal of creating a city integrated with the surrounding territory, creating a polycentric urban system in which functions were distributed throughout the urban area and not only in the historic centre. At the same time, some important functions were transferred outside the perimeter of the ancient city, to try and decongest the centre and establish new hubs capable of directing and promoting the development of more peripheral areas. However, the shift of services outwards has favoured an impoverishment of the urban fabric of the old city centre, increasingly oriented towards a city linked to tourist monoculture.
Within the framework of the Metropolitan City (which united the municipalities of the former Province of Florence), in 2013, the site of the Medici Villas and Gardens in Tuscany was added to the World Heritage List and, in 2021, the extension of the Core Zone of the Historic Centre of Florence towards the hill of San Miniato al Monte was recognised. These new heritage sites create the opportunity for a promotion that is less focused only on the icons of art, but addresses the relationship between art, nature and landscape.
Recent years have seen the growth and consolidation of a new sensitivity towards safeguarding the cultural heritage with the aim of preserving and increasing residence in the historic centre and implementing effective management policies to counter the phenomenon of mass tourism. These and other good practices have been fostered by the realisation that the Historic Centre of Florence is included in the World Heritage List, and this led the municipal administration to approve the Management Plan for the Historic Centre of Florence in 2006, subsequently updated in 2016 and 2022.