The governance of peri-urban areas in Lombardy (IT): the strengths and weaknesses of the regional territorial governance system (original) (raw)

Planning peri-urban areas at regional level: The experience of Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna (Italy

This paper describes the measures adopted by Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna (two Italian regions) for planning their peri-urban areas at regional level. Peri-urban territories merge urban and rural features and extend beyond the municipal administrative boundaries. This prevents their precise delimitation, as well as the adoption of municipal plans for their governance that are coherent with their spatial, economic and social development. As a consequence, many municipal authorities do not give significant attention to these territories and adopt territorial plans that are exclusively based on the urban-rural dichotomy or land-use micro-transformations. Since their jurisdiction extends to a supra-municipal level, the regions could play a decisive role in peri-urban governance. This is the case of Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna regions, among the few in Italy to have drawn up specific legislative and planning documents aimed at supporting the spatial urban-rural equilibrium in the urban fringes. As demonstrated at the end of a documental analysis concerning spatial planning laws and plans, both regions have experimented with specific measures to address the agro-environmental balance and urban regeneration in peri-urban areas, but they do not delimit them spatially or adopt specific measures for their governance. Furthermore, they do not engage in joint regulation or planning of the urban macro-region that extends across their regional territories, from Varese (North Lombardy) to Rimini (South-East Emilia-Romagna), resulting from the merging of their peri-urban areas.

Governance, institutional stewardship and local identity: the Area Regional Territorial Plans experience in Lombardy

Ciudades, 2020

This paper analyses the planning implementation conducted by the Lombardy Region, in two different inter-municipal realities, as a useful example in a local context: the Area Regional Territorial Plan Alpine Valleys and the Area Regional Territorial Plan of the Franciacorta geographical area. These two complex experiences suggest positive conditions for the implementation of policies of Urban-Rural/Mountain partnerships to reach common goals and enhance urban-rural relationships, and complex institutional/administrative frameworks for activating multi-level governance processes.

Planning Systems in Italy within the Context of New Processes of ‘Regionalization’

The purpose of the following paper is twofold. The rst part aims to make sense of some of the efforts and contradictions in building a planning system and reinforcing a general notion of planning in Italy within the context of new processes of 'regionalization'. In particular, it questions the terms in which the issue of local autonomies are being discussed under the current National Reform process. The second part explains in more detail how the territorial (planning) system s work in Italy, focusing on the changes in public administration and the new planning laws. Finally, it gives a dynamic example between levels and government institutions in a regional environment following the introduction of a new tier.

REGIONAL PLANNING FACING GLOBAL CHALLENGES: ISSUES AND PERSPECTIVES IN THE ITALIAN CASE

This paper focuses on the models and practices of regional spatial planning activated in Italy in recent years, in order to evidence the innovations that occurred and challenges that Regional planning institutions are facing. Just after the devolution of local power in Italy in 1977, spatial planning competences began being organized into Regional Institutions. Each of the twenty new Regions must make a Territorial Regional Plan (Piano territoriale regionale) together with a Regional Landscape Plan (Piano paesaggistico), possibly in connection with a Development Regional Program (Programma regionale di sviluppo). The paper addresses these innovations.

Alpine Valleys Territorial Plan in the Lombardy Region, an Experimental Model of Governance / Planning for Comparison

Collection Kultura Kultura Metropolisation, Regionalisation and Rural Intermunicipal Cooperation. What Impact on Local, Regional and National Governments in Europe

This book presents the proceedings of the symposium, organized in Bratislava by the Observatory on Local Autonomy (OLA-www.ola-europe.com), in partnership with the Committee of Municipalities and Regions of Europe (CEMR: www.ccre.org) and with Comenius University of Bratislava (https://uniba.sk/en/) on the theme of "Metropolisation, regionalization and rural intermunicipality in Europe". The Bratislava conference is the continuation of work begun in Vilnius, Bologna and Erlangen and Nuremberg. Territorial reforms are underway in many European States and the establishment or restructuring of regional levels of government and/or the creation of certain forms of metropolitan structures are at the heart of these reforms. Regardless of the historical context of these countries or of their current administrative organization, similar dilemmas and concerns have been raised at the European level. The themes of intermunicipal communication, discussed in this book, which includes metropolitanisation and rural cooperation, illustrates and reminds us the fact that, since the dawn of organised life in society, the basic level of local government has been the town level, and everything else was built up from there.

Region – Province – Municipality. Spatial Planning and Spatial Policy in Italy, 1860-2016

Historical Social Research - Historische Sozialforschung, 2017

This article explores the history of regions, centralism and regionalism in Italya highly controversial political field of state reorganization over 150 years. Focusing on the status of regions within Italy's political power structure and the development of the multi-level governance system, the article draws a line from the foundation of the Italian national state in 1860/61 to the immediate present. It examines political aspirations for decentralized structures and changing perceptions of how to reorganize the state to create efficient structures in different eras as well as power shifts between the different political levels. The article shows that Italian politics oscillated between centralism and regionalism. Reforms took place against the backdrop of different political systems and public debates in a heterogonous country. Since the mid-nineteenth century, the Italian public discussed a federal structure and decentralization. Altogether, reforms were implemented inconsistently, slowly and gradually: The long-term analysis highlights the complexity of constitutional reforms within the background of a set of actor's including regionalist movements, political parties and traditionalist and regionalist sentiments. What we observe is a highly ideological debate on decentralization followed by reservations and resistances across the state. The article concludes that looking at today's Italian politics, attempts for recentralization are gaining ground again. However, the article identifies several dimensions of state transformation. Notions of efficiency and legitimacy have to be taken in account just as much as regional self-interests, diverse structures inherited from the past and the asymmetry of the Italian federalist system. The author stresses the need for a more holistic approach, for a detailed examination of the relationship between those dimensions together with a shift in global power structures. The contribution thus proceeds to develop a multifaceted framework in order to facilitate further research, to understand more fully the shift of power within the Italian multi-level system.

Processes of adaptation and creation of a Territorial Governance. The experience of the cities of Benevento and Salerno (Campania region, Italy)

Sociology Study, 2012

This paper presents some considerations about the definition and role of "medium-sized cities" in the processes of urban governance of the Italian regional systems, in line with the objectives of European programming 2007-2013. Beginning from some theoretical considerations, the research objective is to delineate the features of the "new urban geography" of Campania region as it has been formed on the base of the social and economic processes that in the last 30 years have modified the regional urban system in the widest context of Mezzogiorno. To such aim, the paper is articulated in two parts: the first one in which the fundamental passages are re-called in the processes of development of Italian urban areas that have carried to new paradigms object of theoretical approaches still in course of definition, and the second one in which such processes are considered regarding the model of urban development of Campania, on which the research is concentrated. Specifically, the paper presents the case of two "middle cities" in the Campania region: Benevento and Salerno, which play a particularly important role in the design and development of a "regional network of medium-sized cities".

The urban strategic planning in the peripherical regions: the case of Catania (Sicily)

2002

More and more regional development appears as an effect of the role that cities are able to carry out in the territory. This implies reconsidering not only resources which are available to a city but, above all, its ability to organize urban activities and functions. If these considerations have already found careful appraisal in the most developed regions, by means of the renewal of instruments for the strategic planning of cities, it seems still insufficient the use of these new planning instruments in the less developed regions, although their primary role in the processes of local development. In Southern Italy, for instance, the proliferation of financial support from various sources (E.U., National Government and Regional ones), which imposes plans at different scales (the interregional one, the among cities one and the among suburbs one), and the emergence of actors and stakeholders, also within the presence of public order problems and infrastructural deficiencies, constitut...

Policies, Plans and Projects - Governing the City-region of Milan

2003

This article presents the evolution of the city-region Milan and the metropolitan governance experience in the Milanese area. It argues that new demand for general spatial planning is basically tied much more to the problem of constructing and legitimating choices than of certifying rights; of making action possible rather than of imposing choices based on rational technical principles. Furthermore, a demand for reference frameworks to facilitate co-operation and agreement in unstable and highly fragmented situations is identified

The Establishment of Metropolitan Cities in Italy: An Advance or a Setback for Italian Regionalism?

This paper aims to provide a brief assessment of the legal framework of the newly established metropolitan cities in the Italian domestic legal order. After an historical overview of previous attempts to set up metropolitan cities in Italy (1), it summarizes the main statutory provisions of the Delrio Law (No. 56/2014) through which metropolitan cities finally came into operation (2) and it provides an analysis of its implementation, thereby attempting to make clear whether increased institutional pluralism and differentiation in the local government system will strengthen or weaken Italian regionalism (3). The conclusion will argue that, while the enactment of local government reforms combined with the entering into force of a significant constitutional amendment will increasingly diminish the role of the Regions, metropolitan cities, due to their ambivalent nature, still lack any propulsive thrust and face the risk of being marginalized until a consistent legal framework for their proper funding is laid down (4).