Search results for "urban policy"

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)…

Shifting Imageries: Gentrification and the New Touristic Images of the Inner City of Palermo

2021

After the bombings of 1943, the historic centre of Palermo was left with several crumbling buildings and a social situation of some concern. Therefore, over the last sixty years, all kinds of representations of Palermo have revolved around the presence of criminal organizations and the risks of living in the most dangerous areas of the city (including the city centre). These representations started to change around the beginning of the new century when the inner city of Palermo underwent an intense process of redefinition of its territorial identity. Several key factors may be used to explain this process: from traditional economic reasons concerning gentrification and touristification, to …

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…

Does market concentration affect prices in the urban water industry?

2015

This paper analyzes the relationship between market concentration in the private segment of the water industry and water prices with a sample of municipalities located in the Southern Spanish region of Andalusia. In doing so, several Heckman sample selection models are estimated with the main finding being that market concentration increases the price of water for residential use charged by private companies. The main policy recommendation is that urban water service privatization must be accompanied by the appropriate regulatory and institutional frameworks to promote competition among businesses and monitor water pricing.

Culture and urban regeneration: the role of the European Union regional policy

2008

During the last two decades several European cities have changed significantly their social, economic and institutional identity. This changing is the effect of a long term process of economic restructuring after the decline of the Fordist regime and the rising of the globalization. The policy of economic regeneration and the re-scaling of city’s political economy within the inter-urban and regional competion is one of the most relevant consequence of this process. It is universally recognized that the strategies for the transformation of an old industrial city into a service-based ones require not only interventions on the “hard factors” but also on the “soft factors” of urban development:…

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.

Il muro di Padova: un muro di solida paura

2009

Il muro di Padova: un muro di solida paura - The Padua Wall: a Wall of Solid Fear, If there is a lucky relevance in the concept of liquid fear, it is the physical image of what, not having a solid content, slides over, trickles through chinks and floods any surface that comes across. If applied to a specific case, the concept materialises in its solid ambivalence. In the Padua case under examination, the municipality makes the choice, explosive from a communication perspective, to par8 tially isolate - with an iron fence, the so-called wall - an inhabited area, considered out of control because of the growing flow of regular and irregular immigrants, of crime episodes, of drug dealing, of a…

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…