Governing the Metropolitan Dimension: A Critical Perspective on Institutional Reshaping and Planning Innovation in Italy

As in other European countries, over recent decades the question of metropolitan government has captured political and academic attention in Italy too. The debate has been recently fuelled by a national reform introduced to create 14 metropolitan authorities to provide for new government solutions in the territories of the larger urban areas. Based on literature and empirical observation, this paper presents a critical view of that process by examining the following questions: How do metropolitan areas relate to broader Italian urban policy? How does the reform contribute to a reshaping of multi-level governance through national and local initiatives? And how does institutional reorganisation address territorial diversity? Based on the critical understan-ding of these issues presented in this paper, it is argued that several obsta-cles still need to be overcome before metropolitan government can be pro-perly established and institutionally effective. http://doi.org/10.30689/EJSD2019:70.1650-9544


Introduction
Large cities have always played a prominent role in European identity, as witnessed by the pioneering work of urban sociologists like George Simmel and Max Weber. However, despite their role in the modern history of Europe, it was only in the last four decades of the twentieth century that the government of large cities came to be considered as a prominent political question and the concept of metropolitan area was widely adopted by European countries. Between the 1960s and 1980s, the earliest initiatives to create a formal metropolitan level of government were undertaken in countries 1999 1997 19 9 199 regionalised countries such as Germany, Spain and Italy, as well as countries with a more centralised and hierarchical government struc- politan level was presented as 'a search for correspondence between the ment was intended to be an instrument to decentralise State power in -2002 1991 Following attempts to apply this sort of rational model to the functions of the metropolitan authorities, which were often 199 metropolitan government gained new momentum from the 1990s, when processes such as globalisation and the rise of the European Union prompted the emergence of new forms of territorial organisation 199 1999 200 199 199 2002 2002 F 2007 must deal with two separate but interconnected types of challenges. extended the literature in terms of ways of looking at metropolitan pro-phasis is on spatial, economic or organisational aspects of metropolitan 200 200 While it is not easy to provide a systematic review of the literature the spatial and socio-economic morphologies of the new metropolitan focuses on developing the analytical parameters and tools to identify - 200 2007 201 2012 which has been pervasively adopted by the EU to promote its vision of By contrast, a second broad group aims to discover and analyse the implications of the spatial, socio-economic and political transformation of European urban areas for policy and planning practices. In this strand, most authors advocate the emergence of new, more relational, governance set-

2001
1997 200 200 Given that it is related to the international debate on 'new institutiona-2017 also argues for a radical revision of the planning approach to governing metropolitan development, emphasising the importance of collaborative 200 2007 1997 metropolitan government is seen here as the product of a strategic process therefore, are also seen conceptually as an instrument to provide metropolitan government with the legitimacy to perform functions that were 200 2010 F 2000 200 form the backdrop to the analyses presented in this paper. First, how to context of increasing institutional fragmentation? In Italy, the challenge of addressing these questions represents one -201 1 ropolitan authorities -Metropolitan Cities -with a broad range of planning competencies for the implementation of policy at inter-municipal countered in the process of empowering such metropolitan authorities, 201 -mate in terms of the implementation of the reform. description of the often controversial processes accompanying the institutionalisation of metropolitan areas in Italy. Following this introduction, the second section of this paper provides a brief review of the national debate regarding the problem of large cities and the lack of an process deriving from the implementation of a programme to address cuses on two main issues that, in my opinion, still need to be addressed lack of multi-level governance.

2.
Urban policy and large cities in Italy: a review of the recent debate 1999 1999 tury that urban areas found a clear space in the national political agenda in Italy. Such interest in cities started to grow in the 1990s as a conse-• legislative reforms aimed at decentralising power to city-local governments and paying greater attention to urban areas in the • programmes and incentives to stimulate local initiatives in line with EU practices related to urban areas. 1990 1 2 that transcends local authorities by providing the provinces with greater competencies and by introducing metropolitan areas into the national institutional system. While this reform element remained largely un-

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for the empowerment of city government. For instance, the direct election of mayors and their greater powers over the city councils provided increased political stability to local government, accompanied by the emergence of new political leadership and a managerialisation of policy- 2000 2000 role of these reforms in stimulating the emergence of a new urban political agenda in the 1990s has been underlined by many Italian scholars 200 2002 200 1990s to a series of programmes that the Italian government launched In addition, the authors identify the main obstacle to the emergence of a national urban agenda as lying 'in the process of regionalization role of municipal authorities, which are seen by national government as 201 1 201 the strong role attributed to the regional level of government -espe-2001 2011 levels of the institutional hierarchy, leading to a fragmentation of responsibilities, a lack of progress towards a national urban agenda and a 201 2010 201 that the intense process of demographic and economic polarisation in the urban areas since the 1950s have not been accompanied by adequate territory, at least since the mid-1970s, no longer matches the spatial 2010 within the Italian urban system, with serious implications for the coun- Focusing on the environmental implications of territorial disorder, 201 urbanisation processes that took place in the urban regions, which is a clear consequence of the laissez-faire approach to spatial policy over especially at the urban fringes, in several parts of Italy we now see a new form of metropolis that is characterised by almost unlimited spatial 2017 2010 and advocates an urgent urban agenda based on policy principles such as stopping soil consumption, re-establishing ecological cycles and re-using abandoned physical capital.

In search of metropolitan government/ governance
Metropolitan areas are not new in the Italian administrative system, as provinces². In such cases, the province is replaced by the Metropolitan City and the reform is considered to be a move towards abolishing 2011 from the mayors and local councillors, who support the metropolitan conference comprises the mayors of all the municipalities within the metropolitan area, and functions roughly like a parliament, deliberating policy and government proposals presented by the mayor and metropolitan council. It may also propose its own political initiatives.
of policy areas based on merging previous regional, provincial and mu-    through the formulation of a shared vision of development that was ment to create integrated action plans to address sustainable urban de- tially from the territory encompassed by the boundaries of a Metropoli--tegic plans to go beyond a rigid approach in the consideration of spatial morphologies of metropolitan areas and also address their complex morphologies, especially at the margins of the urban cores. Local action plans were co-produced by the national government and metropolitan authorities over a two-year period, focusing on three of 2020 access to, and use and quality of information and communication tech-2 9 address several recognised metropolitan challenges and address these • lutions and increase digital interaction between city users and public administration, with the aim of achieving 70% of municipalities in Metropolitan Cities providing fully operative digital services • increasing urban sustainability, through energy-saving interven--- • reducing social exclusion, by increasing public housing stock, and providing new community facilities and services targeted at the most vulnerable population. ple reducing energy consumption for lighting in urban areas by 8.8%, increasing public transport passengers by 5% and bicycle use by 10%, building 2,270 new social houses and renovating around 35,000m² of abandoned buildings to support social activities and start-ups in the still being implemented, there is obviously a lack of in-depth analysis and implementation.
tempt to date to promote an urban agenda at the metropolitan level, it is not easy to identify a clear model of metropolitan governance that F 201 that while the co-production of the local action plans is novel within Italian multi-level government relations, by choosing to provide a single design process and, in turn, resulted in quite standardised local action plans.
-F speed up implementation, the national government and the European certainty stemming from the slow progress implementing metropolitan to lead local action plan implementation, instead of the still-weak metperiphery, and undermine the kind of metropolitan governance that the

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Conclusion: the question of dealing with territorial diversity