Italy and European spatial policies: polycentrism, urban networks and local innovation practices1

1. This paper is the outcome of an in-depth work of collaboration between the authors; however, F. Governa has written the first and third sections, while C. Salone has written the second, fourth and fifth sections; the authors have written together the conclusions.

Abstract

This article presents the changes that are emerging in the Italian urban and territorial policies mainly through the discussion of the relationship between the principles of polycentricity and networking affirmed by the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) and, in general, by the European official documents on spatial planning, and the role of polycentrism and networking in Italian praxis.

The article is organized as follow. The first section presents the general framework of the concept of polycentrism and its relevance for the European Union (EU) policies. The second, third and fourth sections briefly describe Italian territorial organization and spatial policies, and illustrate some operational examples of the application of the network model. The fifth section presents the empirical and political relevance of the concepts of network and polycentrism. Finally, in the conclusion, the use of the network proposed by the European official documents on spatial planning and the difference between different meanings of this concept are discussed (from field of interurban relations to local mechanisms of collective action).

Notes

1. This paper is the outcome of an in-depth work of collaboration between the authors; however, F. Governa has written the first and third sections, while C. Salone has written the second, fourth and fifth sections; the authors have written together the conclusions.

2. Just recently, an international team of scholars in urban and regional sciences is studying both the theoretical and practical aspects of polycentrism in the spatial dynamics occurring through the EU. The work is still underway and it is coordinated by the Nordic Centre for Spatial Development, established in Stockholm; its topic is “The role, specific situation and potentials of urban areas as nodes in a polycentric development” and it represents Project 1.1.1 within the ESPON Programme.

3. The question should be discussed more in-depth, by examining in detail the evolution of Commission point of view, at least referring to the Communication “Towards an Urban Agenda in the European Union” (CEC, 1997), but this is not the goal of this article.

4. Clearly, there is a risk that reference to the local actors, to the territory and to its specific characteristics may be reduced to a purely ritualistic or instrumental reference, just as there is a risk that attention paid to the problems of exclusion may be considered uniquely to the degree necessary for the smooth functioning of the system, principally from the economic point of view. According to Mayer (1995), the rising interest in pro-active development strategies to define the competitive pattern of cities and to put them in the international hierarchy is normally turned into the subordination of every sphere of local policy to economic policy. This process is summed up by the international scholars as ‘rise of the entrepreneurial city’ or turn toward “the entrepreneurial mode of urban governance” (Harvey, 1989; Parkinson, 1991; Hall & Hubbard, 1996; Jessop, 1997).

5. Current reference to the principle of subsidiarity, in addition to protecting the economic decision-making and management ability of the low-level entity, organizes the relationships among the public authorities and between the public authority and civil society, intersecting in fact with two converging movements: the movement towards joint planning and the movement towards territorialization of collective action (Faure, 1997).

6. The differences between the various instruments are not only nominal but determine the participation of various actors, including in relationship to the various objectives for which they are intended. In particular, the intesa istituzionale di programma is an agreement between the state and the regions for implementing forms of effective decentralization of decision-making and for supplying a core programme-framework for regional territorial interventions; the intesa di programma quadro is an agreement between the state, the regions and local entities (or other public and private actors) for the definition of an executive programme of interventions of common interest; the contratto di programma, activated by a preceding resolution, establishes a procedure that regulates the relationships between the public actor and large businesses, or consortia of small and medium-sized businesses, for the implementation of industrial-development interventions in depressed areas (objectives 1, 2—and 5b areas); the contratto d'area is an agreement among local administrations, employers'—and union representatives for the implementation of actions intended to accelerate development and to create new jobs in circumscribed territories characterized by serious employment crises; the patto territoriale, finally, similar to territorial pact for employment promote by the EU, establishes an agreement between public and private actors concerning the putting into place of a programme of interventions intended to promote local development.

7. Salone (1999b) contains a more precise presentation of the process and of the territorial-pact financing-pact and evaluation procedures.

8. These are the CIPE decision of 14 May 1999, “Linee guida su programmazione e valutazione ex ante” (Guidelines on planning and evaluation ex ante) which led to the adoption of the “Community Support Framework 2002–2006”, and the CIPE decision of 6 August 1999, which includes the PIT within the “Programma di Sviluppo del Mezzogiorno” (Southern Development Programme), a document issued by the Ministry of the Economy and which is the legal framework of these instruments. For a summary of the PIT-experience in Campania, see Moccia and Sepe (2003).

9. The attempt to establish connections between the two kinds of instruments presented here, in particular between the PRUSST, on the one hand, and territorial pacts and area contracts, on the other hand, has recently been formalized by an agreement protocol between the Ministry of the Treasury, of the Budget and of Economic Planning and the Ministry of Public Works. The commitment, signed on 3 August 1999, concerns verification and evaluation of the synergies deriving from the integration of the kinds of instruments, by means of experimentation with five territorial pacts and three area contracts in order to define the mechanisms necessary for their coordination.

10. Really, the first territorial pacts have been designed in 1997 and thus they preceded the ESDP's official publication: yet, polycentrism and networking were principles increasingly common in European political discourses.

11. Unfortunately, the current central Government is not particularly alert to the question. However, with the exception of the left-centre governments (1997–2000), the central administration of the state never played a significant role in this field.