Brownfields in the local and metropolitan government: the company town of Colleferro (Rome)

Abstract

In order to overcome the general socio-economic crisis, communities and cities are rediscovering the strategic role of location factors as a condition that promotes the participation of urban platforms to global competition. Energy and environmental policy improves the urban regeneration, suggesting priority interest for empty spaces such as the industrial brownfields. If local government doesn’t affect these priorities, the return to the central leadership is already. In the scenario of metropolitan Rome, for example, the twentieth century company town of Colleferro highlights, with vast industrial brownfields, acceptable utilities and infrastructures, significant landscapes as the outcome of site-specific industrial history. The provincial plan intends to involve those wastelands to enhance the metropolitan platform of Rome: as a consequence an intense local and territorial debate is searching for operational proposals. On the one hand the debate intends to involve governments about some urban renewal programs, based on established rules but not always efficient in their various characterizations, on the other one the goal is valuing the building scale because considered more feasible. The critical environmental issues are largely manageable, but in the face at the times of the crisis, the local government must demonstrate strength and leadership, also in view of the investment opportunities that lie ahead with the new policy announced by the ECB.