Search results for " Urban Policy"

Active communities of interest and the political process in Italy

2014

Creative Cities in Italy: new scenarios and projects

2012

Reflections on and experimentation with urban creativity as a competitive factor put together in recent years, starting with the works of Florida and Landry, gave rise to further theoretical/operative reflections aimed at providing a greater territorial dimension to the creative city, lessening the rhetorical character and increasing that of the concrete effects on the quality of life. In 2007 my book “Creative City: Dynamics, Innovations, Actions” identified the need for concrete evolution and pointed out the factors that make it possible for urban creativity to become a launch pad for new economies and a creative force for new cities and not simply an attractive force for intellectual res…

The EU’s urban policy through the 2008 financial crisis: A perspective from the case of Oporto

Many European countries are currently faced with a difficult situation fostered by a set of financial, socioeconomic and environmental problems. The last decade has been particularly rough for the Southern Europe countries due to the political reactions from the European Union (EU) to the strong economic crisis that affected the great majority of the developed economies. The EU’s actions, placed in order to face such challenges, can be characterised as a series of austerity measures that clearly diverged from the original ongoing strategies. The debate on the causes of the crisis remains unsettled and the dominant studies on the crisis focus the socioeconomic national indicators. Since the …

Urban change and regional development at the margins of Europe: an introduction

2018

Since the beginning of the nineties the urban dimension has taken a growing relevance within the EU’s regional policy. The implementation of community initiatives or other areabased projects under the structural funds has meant for several cities a tangible opportunity to start urban renewal, introduce innovative planning instruments and implement new governance relations. In the so called “less developed” regions, this process has also been accompanied by significant financial resources, giving local governments and municipalities the chance to start large infrastructure projects of metropolitan or even regional relevance. Development processes in regions and urban areas, however, have fol…

Institutional rescaling, urban policy and planning innovation in Italy: is city- region the answer?

2016

A consequence of the crisis for several European countries is the return of cities and urban policy within the national agenda. It is not a uniform process, since the emergence of political priorities related to the urban areas may be influenced by several domestic factors, including the legal framework, institutional organisation, approaches to planning and other issues for policy-making. An interesting perspective to observe these processes is to analyzing the question of metropolitan areas and city-regions which, despite the difficulties, all over Europe are increasingly seen as a crucial government scale to cope with some old (decentralisation, economic competitiveness, social cohesion)…

Il dopo-urban nelle città italiane: storia di un mainstreaming interotto

2016

L’articolo si propone di riflettere sulla diffusione dell’approccio integrato proposto dall’iniziativa comunitaria Urban nelle politiche di coesione regionale nel più ampio contesto della questione urbana in Italia. L’attenzione è centrata sul ciclo di programmazione 2007-2013, periodo deputato a trasferire le buone pratiche acquisite da Urban nei programmi urbani sostenuti dai fondi strutturali, ma condizionato da vari fattori di contesto tra i quali l’insorgere della crisi post-2008. Proponendo un giudizio sostanzialmente negativo su tale processo di diffusione, il testo propone alcune spiegazioni, tra le quali: le mutazioni del ciclo politico, con le relative influenze sulla formulazione…

Understanding the impact of the EU-led urban initiatives on city-making: evidences from the case of Palermo (Italy)

Southern Italy – the “Italian Mezzogiorno” – is recognised as one of the most controversial case for regional development in the European Union (Leonardi, 2005; Piattoni and Polverari, 2016). Within this broad geographical unit, home of around one third of the country’s population, after thirty years from the reform of the structural funds that in 1988 reshaped Cohesion policy, large regions such as Campania and Sicily have never changed their status of ‘less developed regions’. Major urban areas within these regions, therefore, reflect – and to some extent are an expression of – all the development questions the EU’s regional policy has aimed to address from the beginning: infrastructures …

Governing the Metropolitan Dimension: A Critical Perspective on Institutional Reshaping and Planning Innovation in Italy

2019

As in other European countries, over recent decades the question of met- ropolitan government has captured political and academic attention in Italy too. The debate has been recently fuelled by a national reform introduced to create 14 metropolitan authorities to provide for new government solutions in the territories of the larger urban areas. Based on literature and empirical observation, this paper presents a critical view of that process by examining the following questions: How do metropolitan areas relate to broader Italian urban policy? How does the reform contribute to a reshaping of multi-level governance through national and local initiatives? And how does institutional reorganisa…

Editorial

2023

The article is an introduction to a special issue entitled "A spotlight on Italian cities: urban change, governance and planning", which reflects different ways urban questions can arise in the Italian cities and the many directions can be given to urban policy under the impulse of municipalities and local stakeholders.

Community action and planning. Contexts, drivers and outcomes

2014

With trust in top-down government faltering, community-based groups around the world are displaying an ever-greater appetite to take control of their own lives and neighbourhoods. Government, for its part, is keen to embrace the projects and the planning undertaken at this level, attempting to regularise it and use it as a means of reconnecting to citizens and localising democracy. This unique book analyses the contexts, drivers and outcomes of community action and planning in a selection of case studies in the global north: from emergent neighbourhood planning in England to the community-based housing movement in New York, and from active citizenship in the Dutch new towns to associative a…