EUKN - Italy - 10 years of management of territorial complexity (“Dieci anni di governo delle complessità territoriali”)

10 years of management of territorial complexity (“Dieci anni di governo delle complessità territoriali”) - IT.

Introduction

The first italian urban regeneration Programmes (PRU- Programmi di Riqualificazione urbana) have been launched 10 years ago. To collect urban regeneration Programmes the Ministry of Infrastructure published a research titled “10 years of management of territorial complexity”. It aims at analysing and assessing results, bottlenecks, procedural, administrative and organizational innovations produced by italian urban regeneration Programmes.

Description

The research highlights the capability of urban regeneration Programmes to disseminate a new culture based on urban regeneration and renewal. It focuses on Programmes geared to regenerate lands and buildings of public ownership and to renew deprived or disused buildings owned by private subjects. These Programmes are implemented following the Municipal Development Plans and are focused on the widest cooperation between local stakeholders and Government. Private owners have always been involved in urban regeneration interventions. Indeed, they provided financial resources and land whose use have been changed giving the possibility to build up social housing, services, commercial and tourist infrastructure. The research approaches the instruments implemented to change land ownership in urban regeneration areas:

compulsory purchase (e.g. the areas close to the Pescara railway station)
the Municipal government transferred or acquired ownership (e.g. the Municipality of Cesena gained 9 million EURO through land sales).

Background information

The call of the Ministry of Infrastructure to launch the research was addressed to Municipalities which tackled urban regeneration interventions involving:

buildings and lands of public ownership
deprived or disused buildings (e.g brownfields, former railways, etc.) of private property
social housing neighbours
former rural areas located in urban areas
relatively old areas around the city centre
newer housing estate areas
post WWII large housing estates.

These interventions tried to reduce public expenses through the involvement of private investors. The call involves 51 Municipalities belonging to 16 Italian Regions for a total of 86 regeneration Programmes (63 Urban Regeneration Programmes – PRU- and 23 Cipe- Interministerial Committee for Economic Planning).

Methodology

The research brings out the innovative organizational models introduced by the Programmes for urban regeneration, which created a synergy between different Programmes and strengthened the cooperation between the different local practitioners and local departments. The research lists the main public resources financing the Programmes, namely Ministry of Infrastructure’s funds and the Interministerial Committee for Economic Planning (CIPE) through Structural Funds Objective 1 and 2, as well as other public financing, private resources, which represented 83 percent of the total amount (more than 4 billion EURO) of investments activated by the two Programmes.

Conclusions

The research underlines the following results of the Programmes for urban regeneration:

implementation of 86 urban regeneration Programmes (in some case they are in progress) in 51 Municipalities. Such Programmes helped to renew and regenerate towns, neighbours and deprived areas giving the possibility to develop new territorial and urban services
innovation in procedural and management activities which became a common heritage
increase of skills and expertise at Municipality level and promotion of a new culture in managing urban and territorial development policies.

Notwithstanding, the research evaluates the effectiveness of the land ownership policy and assesses the results of the the land ownership policy implementation. Furthermore, it provides important instruments to better know and understand the mechanisms of land ownership markets.

Contact info

Ministry of Infrastructure
Ms. Daniela Versino

Publication date

01/03/2006

Project finished

Researcher

The Ministry of Infrastructure – Department for Programming and Coordinating Territorial Development, Personnell and General Services - General Directorate for Programming and European Programmes.

Links

Ministry of Infrastructure (in italian)

Document type

research

Themes

Urban Policy > Urban environment

Keywords

Urban renewal

Institutional characteristics National Government