The New Season of Strategic Planning in Italy: Challenges and Opportunities in a Changing Institutional and Planning Context

Important changes are occurring to the Italian planning system and practices following Law 56/2014 and the recent negative result of a national referendum, concerning a constitutional reform aimed to reorder the traditional institutional levels by abolishing provinces and merging small municipalities. At the moment, these attempts of "reorganization" of the institutional architecture concern the transformation of all provinces in second level institution, with non-elected assemblies and a reduction of their competencies; the replacement of provinces who insist on 14 major regional capital cities with "Metropolitan cities", joint city-governments charged to provide for a strategic plan, concerning the metropolitan region; the amalgamation of municipalities with a population of up to 5,000 inhabitants. Of course, the need of co-operation on strategic issues is not new in Italy: institutions have an old history of working together to address planning issues across local boundaries. Nevertheless, the questioning on the role of provinces and the emergence of cooperation as a duty certainly pose some questions concerning the redefinition of planning spaces and responsibilities, the role of previous planning activities, the access to the cooperative arena, the need for regional design practices. By providing a better understanding of the way spatial planning is changing in Italy, the contribution aims to contribute to develop a deep reflection on the adaptation of planning tools and processes, as well as on the role of regional studies and design in defining the urban region, its spatial development and its articulations in different ways at various spatial scales and with varying effects.