Urban and territorial policies

Research focus

The Peer review has evaluated this group as Good

The field and the frontiers The crisis of traditional planning models has prompted the exploration of alternative paths in urban and regional policies over the last 15 years. Public administration and local governments alike have embarked upon a process of renovation on different institutional levels and scales. The approach: interpretative and critical The planning field has broken up into a variety of contrasting tendencies. It is also the place where themes and reflections of various disciplines intertwine (sociological, political, organisational, and economic). In addition Italian planning studies are at the stake for several architectural schools. A necessary task assumed by the research group is to rethink the emergent problems and demands through selected research lines, both engaged in the field and in comparative studies, in order to verify the meaning and relevance of the actual approaches and professional profiles. On one hand it is assumed a focus on the quality and impacts of the projects which urban policies entail: any intervention implies a critical interpretation of the context. It also entails a representation of the context’s evolutionary criticalities and possibilities, a shared formulation of a practical perspectives, their viability and a contextual verification of the results and t. On the other hand urban projects have to be observed as fields of interaction, by combining policy enquiry and the studies on development projects. Several experts may benefit from this, especially in terms of added knowledge in the field of land use regulation, public management, policy formulation and urban design. An investigation on the variety of experiences is required to identify the conditions triggering innovation in planning. Even at this early stage four areas where to concentrate field analysis were identified. Four significant research profiles can be outlined as follows. Territorial cohesion and innovative development policies (R1) The connection between problems of development and issues of territorial governance has been jointly investigated in the perspective of exploring governance patterns and specific effects of territorial policies. A new generation of policies was experimented at national and local level, under the impulse and support of EU programming. It is controversial whether they were able both to produce permanent effects in public investments, production of public goods and services to generate new governance patterns in less developed Italian regions and beyond. The analysis of major EU intiatives, and especially of local development projects saw the research group in a leading position within the national debate on urban and regional policies and gave an impulse for rethinking territorial integrated and sectoral policies for innovation in Italy. Innovations in urban projects and policies (R2) A main challenge for urban policies in Italy is to direct and legitimate private interests towards common aims and to shape interventions capable of improving both the context’s competitiveness and cohesion. Comparative analysis revealed key aspects of 4 8 the interplay between political and technical dimensions in planning decisions. In particular, some medium-sized municipalities, show how strategic planning may affect public management and reinforcing its effectiveness. The demand to develop shared strategies expresses a need for guidance and operational knowledge in managing participation, negotiation and the formation of coalitions. Exploration on the field of public management, is expected to provide new evidences about challenges and possible paths for organizational change in local governments. Area based policies: integrated projects, participation and the territorialisation of sectoral policies (R3) The “integrated territorial projects” developed in the framework of the EU programs represent a hybrid experiment that sought to merge technocratic views with the needs of local mobilisation. Policy integration implies the opportunity of enriching the content of public actions facing complex urban problems. Programs aimed at the social revitalization of overstressed neighbourhoods, projects involving citizens and local actors in participatory processes, local policies for urban safety, innovative area based welfare programs have been investigated with an interest for the redefinition of the urban policy agenda under the pressure of European guidelines. New Public private relations in urban and territorial policies (R4) Change in the role and action of the Central State and of Local Governments implied the cooperation between public institutions and the private and nonprofit sectors in urban and regional policymaking. The focus of the research group is on the implications of mixed actor networks in urban and regional policies. The research considered the transformation processes in the government structure and tools at local and national levels (outsourcing, task units, use of competitive grants, privatization process), in the fields of urban regeneration and local development.

Departments

Dipartimento di Architettura e Pianificazione (DIAP)

Professors

Full Professors
P.C. Palermo
Associate Professors
G. Pasqui
G. Capitani
Assistant Professors
M. Bolocan Goldstein
M. Bricocoli
E. Granata
C. Pacchi