New operative references for the construction of the public city and territorial governance

Abstract

In recent years, metropolization processes have brought about significant territorial transformations, modifying the meaning of the problems connected to urban planning, the environment, and the landscape (Oliva, 2010). The indiscriminate exploitation of natural resources, the growth of the urban population, increased climate-changing emissions spatial, social, and cultural polarization and the ongoing health crisis, raise the need for an integrated, interscalar strategy of public governance aimed at urban regeneration, in order to restore prospects of fairness, quality, and efficiency to the governance of the contemporary city. In Italy, given the inadequacy of its traditional instruments, this policy appears impossible to implement without a Reform for Territorial Governance that systematizes the policies, instruments, and mechanisms for implementation. The reform must provide certainty of the right to the innovations put into play in many planning experiences that have tasked equalization practices (compensation, rewards, incentives, building loans, tax levies, etc.) with achieving several different public or general-interest objectives. In this framework of reference, the paper, starting from analysis of certain case studies, deals with the complex issues relating to innovation in the local urban plan, with particular reference to defining possible new operative references for the construction of the public city and territorial governance.