Evaluation and the environmental democracy of cities: Strategic Environmental Assessment of urban plans in Italy (original) (raw)
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Assessment of urban plans in Italy
2000
Cities stand up as a major concern for environmental governance and democracy, and an ideal target for theoretical investigations and practical innovations alike. Our work is concerned with reconstructing the links between democracy and the environment, by targeting urban governance and tapping into the institutional practices of Urban Planning and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA). SEA is a major policy tool, and its interplay with planning unravels key issues in both urban governance and environmental democracy, including coping with fundamental risks, voicing non-human agents, managing commons, addressing environmental justice. The observations we present in this paper rest on two parallel approaches. First, we carried out a content review of 12 SEA reports concerning urban plans in Italy. Second, we were involved in two case studies concerning urban planning and SEA in the towns of Monopoli and Magenta. We point to some key reflections with the aim of opening up the discussion. Participation often languishes in institutional arenas, yet it thrives in other forms that affect decision-making. Negotiation around individual planning processes should be framed in the general governance arrangements that are constantly reshaped through interactions among fluid transorganizational networks. Legally binding measures have an ambivalent relation with environmental governance strategies, and they are handled with difficulty by deliberative planning approaches. In mainstreaming new policy tools (such as SEA), procedural aspects are usually stressed, whereas a focus on process and desired outcomes could foster, respectively, capacity building and salience.
Strategic Environmental Assessment and the Democratisation Of Spatial Planning
Journal of Environmental …, 2011
This paper investigates the potential of Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) to contribute to the high-level policy objective of fostering democratisation in spatial planning. Democratic SEA is conceptualised by discussing environmental citizenship, public control over policy making, and participants' empowerment. The empirical investigation is based on the analysis of SEA documents produced during 25 municipal spatial planning processes in Italy between 2004 and 2010. The study found that advances are more evident in the creation of cross-sectoral governance networks than in the involvement of citizens and civil-society organisations. SEA seems to be increasing transparency and expanding 9 the scope of democratic control over spatial planning decisions, though the boundaries between experts, decision makers and citizens are clearly demarcated. To strengthen democratisation processes, the paper argues that all participants should consider themselves equally responsible within SEA networks, and be ready to question alternative environmental value systems that underpin spatial planning processes.
2012
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a major policy evaluation tool, for institutional processes, when they need to cope with fundamental risks, give voice to non-human agents, manage commons, and address environmental justice. The interplay of SEA with planning, unravels key issues and criticalities in both urban governance and environmental democracy. How can evaluation be developed to support the process? Structured evaluation methods applied in environmental assessment are maybe not sufficient to solve complex social conflicts. We point out some key reflections with the aim of opening up the discussion, by taking the case study of the environmental assessment of pollutant activities in the main industrial port cities of Southern Italy. They represent, at the moment, the most significant social criticality in our country, related to the interplay between environmental assessment and risk for labor. The paper focuses on the case study by mentioning the evolution of some thoughts about the red stripe that links sustainability, environmental democracy, and social evaluation, and illustrates the issues of these aspects in the case study, with the aim of underlining the difficulty of environmental assessment tools as a major support for planning processes, when social conflicts arise.
Sustainability, 2012
Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is a major policy evaluation tool, for institutional processes, when they need to cope with fundamental risks, give voice to non-human agents, manage commons, and address environmental justice. The interplay of SEA with planning, unravels key issues and criticalities in both urban governance and environmental democracy. How can evaluation be developed to support the process? Structured evaluation methods applied in environmental assessment are maybe not sufficient to solve complex social conflicts. We point out some key reflections with the aim of opening up the discussion, by taking the case study of the environmental assessment of pollutant activities in the main industrial port cities of Southern Italy. They represent, at the moment, the most significant social criticality in our country, related to the interplay between environmental assessment and risk for labor. The paper focuses on the case study by mentioning the evolution of some thoughts about the red stripe that links sustainability, environmental democracy, and social evaluation, and illustrates the issues of these aspects in the case study, with the aim of underlining the difficulty of environmental assessment tools as a major support for planning processes, when social conflicts arise.
New Italian perspectives on urban planning: A policy tool approach’
2008
In the last fifteen years Italy has witnessed the proliferation of forms of public intervention in the field of urban planning and policymaking. Partaking in the European Union fostered structural institutional and economic changes (e.g. subsidiarity, concurrence) and more specifically the use of alternative and sometimes innovative urban policy tools. The traditional planning perspective generally assumes that new forms of intervention are techniques which better pursue a more or less broad set of goals, including urban regeneration, environmental sustainability, local economic development, social cohesion and others. This paper argues that Italian urban and regional studies have increasingly adopted perspectives and methods which are typical of public policy analysis, but that they have failed in coming to terms with the intertwined technical and political dimensions of the urban policy tool issue. In fact, a policy tool approach is proposed to focus on the multiple instruments used by governments to structure public action: regulation, government corporations and government sponsored enterprises, grants, public-private contracts, tax expenditures and others. Critically drawing on the existing international body of literature, this article envisions a theoretical and interpretative framework aimed at using the policy tool as analytical unit for reconsidering urban planning in Italy and abroad. It is argued that, at this stage, it is possible to pose specific technical and political questions about governing spatial transformations of cities and regions through policy instruments and that the policy tool perspective in this way can give innovative impulse to further research in urban planning and to policy making.
Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 2017
Clear and effective legislation is a prerequisite to move sustainable development from theory into practice. This paper develops a methodology to investigate how Italian regions use Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) and the procedures used in the European Union (EU) to pursue sustainable development of policies, plans, and programs (PPPs). This case study is at the Italian regional level, examined to identify flaws and areas for improvement for each regional legislative framework. For this purpose, we used criteria from international debates on sustainability assessments. Through statistical multidimensional analysis, we classified Italian regions with similar SEA legislation. We developed four taxonomies, based on: i) legislation and guidelines; ii) integration between SEA and PPPs; iii) sustainability goals; iv) technical organization; v) participatory organization; and vi) monitoring. Our findings suggest that Italian administrators should cooperate to improve legislation at the regional level. Acknowledging the institutioncentered nature of SEA, this methodology could support SEA development in European countries with diversified traditions.
Exploring the Governance of Naples, Italy, Through a Climate Responsive Approach
Governance of Climate Responsive Cities
Combating climate change is not among the priorities of public policies in Italy. Neither the adoption of the National Strategy for Climate Adaptation has led to implement a national policy. This is why the governance of climate change varies across regions depending on the environmental sensitivity, and attitudes by local institutions, the kind of activism by public administrators, their power or fragility, and the abilities in drawing from EU funds. This chapter points out that bringing climate to the center calls for multilevel governance not only by means of technical and political abilities, but also by sharing climate responsive narratives, and actions with people. This allows exploring climate effects on local contexts and even adding creativity to the governance model. Naples cannot consider climate change as a priority due to the perception of more urgent problems to be solved. Accordingly, the chapter discusses how narratives of climate change work for both the ongoing new urban plan and strategic metropolitan plan by promoting shared processes of socio-ecological regeneration. The chapter argues that the only way to put global environmental challenges into fragile cities' agendas is to assume climate change as an opportunity to radically rethink social, ecological, and economic relations.
2014
Sustainable urban development, a major issue at global scale, will become more relevant according to population growth predictions in developed and developing countries. Societal and international recognition of sustainability concerns led to the development of specific tools and procedures, known as sustainability assessments/appraisals (SA). Their effectiveness however, considering that global quality life indicators have worsened since their introduction, has promoted a re-thinking of SA instruments. More precisely, Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), – a tool introduced in the European context to evaluate policies, plans, and programmes (PPPs), – is being reconsidered because of several features that seem to limit its effectiveness. Over time, SEA has evolved in response to external and internal factors dealing with technical, procedural, planning and governance systems thus involving a shift of paradigm from EIA-based SEAs (first generation protocols) towards more integra...
Sustainability
The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda is known for its holistic and global dimension, as demonstrated by the saying “no one left behind”. However, local governments still struggle to take tangible actions and to reallocate resources for implementing Sustainability Strategies. With the aim to improve multi-level governance for sustainable development with complex and cross-sectoral policies, the research investigates how much Regional Sustainable Development Strategies (RSDS) and public authorities’ structures are mutually consistent. Starting from the existing governance framework at the regional and local levels (Province and Metropolitan City), the study analyzes: the organizational structures/functions of the public institutions and the integration between their competences and the RSDS targets. The case study is the Lombardy Region in Italy. The analyses were conducted through a review of key legislations and regulations, and the introduction of a homogeneous reading grid that identif...
Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning, 1999
Citizens' participation in integrated assessment of climate change highlights the uneasy relationship between democracy and expert knowledges as they have been generally understood in the West. Based on empirical material gathered through in-depth groups in Venice (Italy) and citizens' panels in St. Helens (UK), the paper explores: (1) some of the challenges and opportunities of qualitative and comparative research on climate change; and (2) the similarities and differences in citizens' environmental assessment in two European cities facing economic, urban and social re-structuring. The authors research reveals a general willingness to participate, albeit conditional, despite initial scepticism and interrogation about the objectives. During the process, participants in both cities show: (a) a broad contextual understanding of uncertainties and complexities; (b) how important interpersonal skills between lay and expert publics are; and (c) that precaution should generally apply in the case of uncertainties concerning global environmental change.