EUKN - Italy - Human mobility & Urban Policies, IT.

Human mobility & Urban Policies, IT.

Introduction

The Italian Ministry of Infrastructure supported the drafting of a research titled “Human mobility & Urban Policies”. This is focused on an in-depth overview of the people mobility trends throughout the Italian and European territories, highlighting their influence on urban polices at national and local level.

Description

Acquiring skills on demographic issues has a great importance to support an effective implementation of labour market, infrastructure, regional as well as territorial policies. The “Human mobility & Urban Policies” study aims at capitalising knowledge on European demography-related issues and trends and disseminating European Spatial Planning Observation Network (ESPON) Programme methodologies and results. Its objectives are:

the analysis of the main research-oriented projects aimed at investigating the relationship between demographic changes and urban policies carried out throughout Europe
the study of the Italian migration trends over the last 50 years, with particular attention to the migratory flows into the Lazio and Abruzzo regions and into their capital Cities
the promotion and dissemination of ESPON 1.1.4 methodology and results
the evaluation of URBAN I and URBAN II Programmes’ results within the Cities of Rome and Pescara as regards the demographic issues.

Background information

Italy has a long history of emigration, while the phenomenon of immigration into Italy occurred relatively late. Nevertheless, it has a long history of internal mobility, especially directed from the South to the North part of the country and from the countryside to the main important economic poles. Immigration from non-EU countries is still a quite new phenomenon and it is characterized by high-volume flows and large number of illegal immigrants. As a consequence, in the last few years, many Cities faced long-term immigration and started promoting social inclusion and integration policies, increasing the quality of social services and strengthening the social integration of immigrants.

Methodology

The report highlights the relevance of implementing transnational governmental and non-governmental researches in the field of human mobility as an instrument to adequately face urban issues. The research summarizes the experiences gained from the following transnational research Programmes:

TURIN: during the 1970s, the City promoted networking among European towns within urban policies
RURE (Regional and Urban restructuring in Europe): aimed at collecting information as regards the new European regional and urban structure stemmed from the social, economic and geopolitical changeovers occurred in the 1980s
SELMA (Spatial Deconcentration of Economic Land Use and Quality of Life in European Metropolitan Areas): supported within the Fifth Framework Programme and addressed to the analysis of the effects of delocalisation on people’s life standards
MIRE (Interregional Migration in Europe): described the main migration flows throughout Europe in the 1990s
the Action 1.1.4 of the ESPON Programme: investigated the spatial effects of demographic trends and migration flows.

Conclusions

The “Human mobility & Urban Policies” study investigates the most important European comparative research projects carried out in the latest years, since 1970s up to the innovative current ESPON 1.1.4 Programme. It overviews the main spatial and territorial effects of human mobility in terms of economic, social, cultural and political outcomes. In the framework of the MIRE and ESPON Programmes, the research evaluates the results of the latest migration trends in Italy. In particular, it goes insight the spatial effects of migration flows in the towns of Rome and Pescara analysing how the two Cities dealt with this issue thanks to the URBAN Programmes implementation.

Contact info

Ministry of Infrastructure
Italy
Ms. Cinzia Zincone

Publication date

Project finished

Researcher

Ministry of Infrastructure

Links

Ministry of Infrastructure (in Iitalian)Espon Programme

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration > Integration of social groups

Keywords

Ethnic minorities

Institutional characteristics National Government