Urban Development Programmes in Italy

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1 Urban Development Programmes in Italy National institutional innovation and European programmes Enzo Mingione and Giampaolo Nuvolati (University of Milan-Bicocca) Introduction In order to understand better the current decay in some districts and peripheries of Italian cities, it is worth making a few introductory remarks on urbanisation and the related continual failure to reorganise the housing system that has characterised the country since the second world war. In doing so, we need to distinguish clearly between the situation in the North and that in the South. In particular, in the so-called Industrial Triangle in the North (Milan, Turin and Genoa) the huge sums invested in cheap working-class housing from the 1950s constituted a policy response to the waves of worker immigration from the South. The basic aim of this investment was to regulate, also from an economic and social standpoint, the influx and integration of a labour force coming from outside. Given the rundown in the housing stock in the following decades, privatisation and the rehabilitation of dwellings were introduced, but they were not accompanied by new large-scale public housing projects. The situation in the cities of the South (Naples, Reggio Calabria, Palermo, Bari) was different. They were also the destination for waves of migrants from the countryside, but in their case various forms of speculation, unauthorised building and self-building began in the 1960s and continued on a massive scale in the following decades. Alongside these two trends in the development of the peripheries, a policy of urban renewal of the old historical centres was implemented in many Italian cities from the 1950s, reaching peaks of activity in the period spanning the 1960s and 1970s. In the mid 1960s, during a phase of strong economic growth, a high level debate about the centri storici (historic cores or old city centres) developed at meetings promoted by ANCSA (National Association of Historical and Artistic City Centres). ANCSA aimed to maintain low-income housing, against the pressure of market forces, and at the same time preserve buildings. However, concurrent with these processes there has also occurred the tertiarisation and gentrification of some central districts in cities. The more or less forced displacement of artisans and the poorer strata to the peripheries has been emblematic of a more general polarisation within Italian society. From the 1980s, two totally opposed trends have emerged also bearing on the housing question. On one side, forms of marginalisation linked both to the poor quality of dwellings and eviction and expulsion affecting weaker social groups have continued to exist. On the other, however, the part of the population able to achieve home ownership and then pass on their properties to younger family members has grown in size, determining a sort of treasurisation of the dwellings (Nuvolati e Zayczyk, 1990). In this regard, census data and sociological surveys carried out in the last few decades clearly show that the housing problem in Italy has become overall less serious. As well as the rise in home ownership, families have expressed an increasing level of satisfaction with their dwellings. After the decades of the enormous uncontrolled expansion in poor-quality housing, more recent years have witnessed a growing attention to the rehabilitation and safeguarding of the nation s architectural and urbanistic heritage. This has led to an indisputable improvement in housing conditions, above all for middle- and upper class families. Data in a survey (Indagine Multiscopo sulle Famiglie) conducted by the National Statistical Office, ISTAT, reveals that the share of dwellings in a bad state of repair according to their occupants decreased from 7.6% in 1993 to 5.7% in This positive picture applies above all in the North and Centre, while in the South and Islands the percentage of dwellings described as in a bad state of repair is still high, though rapidly declining. Moreover, it is the municipalities in the centre of the metropolitan areas that are worse affected compared to the metropolitan peripheries and smaller towns where new buildings, 1

2 easier renovation of old edifices and a less congested and concentrated growth in construction have made it possible to lessen conditions of hardship. Table - Percentage of dwellings in a bad state of repair by geographical area, North-west Italy North-east Italy Central Italy South Italy Islands Italy Central metropolitan municipality 8.2 Peripheral metropolitan area 5.5 Up to 2,000 inhabitants 4.4 From 2,001 to 10,000 inhabitants 5.0 From 10,001 to 50,000 inhabitants ,001 and over inhabitants 5.1 Italy 5.7 Source: Istat, Indagine Multiscopo sulle Famiglie. Aspetti della vita quotidiana, 2000, Roma, Despite the growth, also qualitatively speaking, in the residential housing stock in Italy, it is of course the case that not all the risks associated with the safety of buildings have now been eliminated. The two main categories to be considered in this respect are decay due to age, depending on when a building was put up, and decay resulting from faulty construction, depending above all on the method of building used for dwellings. The most important aspects in this connection are, first, a rapid process of building in the postwar period, often associated with the poor technical quality of buildings and lack of building project assessment - also the case in the North and, second, illegal house construction and self-building, which have strongly characterised the access to home ownership in the poorer southern parts of the country. To point out that a general improvement in housing conditions has taken place does not mean that more recent forms of social and housing privation have been overlooked, even though they are concentrated in relatively confined areas and involve populations which are weaker in socioeconomic terms (Cremaschi, 2001: 7), immigrant in particular (Tosi, 1994). In many cities, the improvement in housing has taken place alongside a deterioration in the overall living environment in which dwellings are located, leading to the need to rethink urban policies so that they meet an increasingly varied range of needs expressed by citizens in respect of participation, socialisation, security and liveability. In short, the housing question in Italy today is characterised by three types of polarisation. One has historical origins in the concentration of the building of public housing in the immediate postwar period. During the following years, the upgrading of this housing stock was given priority over its expansion. A second polarisation is of the geographical kind: the gap between North and South in the housing sector, reproducing in certain respects the backwardness of the South in other areas of the country s social and economic development. Lastly, the third polarisation lies in the growing divergence between affluent groups of the population, who not only own their dwellings but also invest quite regularly in this sector, and those groups who are still in a particularly precarious housing situation or, at any rate, suffer from marginalisation linked with the decay of the entire social fabric and infrastructure relating to housing. 2

3 1. The general context of the Urban Development Programmes (UDPs) in Italy The model of expansion outlined above was strongly marked by both the concentration of the building of public housing in the period after the second world war and by the informal nature of housing development in the South. Conversely, recent decades have witnessed the lack of a real national policy for urban renewal and the implementation of local actions. When compared with North European urban policy, the Italian model looks like a patchwork of initiatives and actors that have produced multiple forms of urban actions in different sectors but lacking overall co-ordination (Padovani, 2000: 3). In other words, we cannot say that Italy has an integrated plan of intervention to promote social inclusion profiting from the European experience. As Tosi and Padovani have pointed out, delays caused by local administrations are particularly evident and due to the lack of a true national policy able to develop an articulated strategy of intervention in the rundown urban areas. Moreover, the autonomy of the local municipalities in Italy (the 100 cities nation) in promoting public policies has been traditionally more formal than substantial and strongly bounded by the central institutions, generating a lack of capabilities of local authorities in dealing with urban problems and solutions (Avarello 2001: 3). However, in spite of these problems, Italy can offer a myriad of remarkable positive experiences: as a result of the work of volunteer associations, municipalities, public agencies and various organisations, a vast store of knowledge has been built up and a wide range of operative possibilities has been tried out (Tosi, 1994: 226). Moreover, since the early 1990s Italy has seen a growing trend in institutional innovation and co-operation between public bodies that has generated experimentation in the regeneration process. Partnerships between public and private sectors have been developed in the Welfare system in general as well as in the local re-qualification processes which invested specific urban areas (Ombuen, 2001: 3). As a result, the gap between Europe and Italy is closing, also if not completely cancelled as Cremaschi (2001: 5) and Avarello (2001: 7) point out, both underlying the still less socially than physically - oriented features of the requalification programmes in Italy, when compared with the European ones. In other terms, PIC Urban is characterised by controversial aspects being the most innovative programme in the framework of the Italian urban policies but also being more oriented to limit structural deficit than to improve social benefit (Bertolini, 2001) From the 1950s to the 1980s: housing needs and policy actions Urban renewal in Italy started to become an issue of national concern in Italy during the 1950s, and was initially seen in terms of recuperating ancient urban settlements and the historic centres of cities. The approach was essentially formulated in cultural terms by an elite of intellectuals and progressive town planners interested in the preservation of historical and architectural values. At the same time, a mounting process was taking place of expulsion of low-income residents from the historic cores and their replacement by commercial and professional operators and high-income dwellers (UN, 1978). In the 1960s, organised movements of local inhabitants protesting against their speculative expulsion contributed to the radical transformation of the issue: the concept of historic cores evolved from that of a precious heritage to be preserved in its original form, regardless of social implications, to an important and active feature of the city, a vital and crucial element in the overall urban planning process (EC, 1980: 32). In the 1970s, in a context of economic crisis and an excess of 13 million rooms (standard need being set at one room per inhabitant), government attempted to reduce housing waste through a national policy of minimising incentives for new construction while at the same time encouraging socially oriented rehabilitation of existing dwellings, also with the above-mentioned old age of the 3

4 housing stock in mind. Examples of these policies are the National Housing Act of 1971 and the widespread use of joint rehabilitation projects involving municipalities and private owners, based on legally enforceable rent control. However, from the 1970s all the main industrialised nations, including Italy, were also beset by mounting social problems connected with new forms of poverty (Tosi, 1994: 156). In general, and as already pointed out above, in this period a process of polarisation in housing emerged in which, on one side, a growing number of families came to own their own homes (see table below) and, on the other, groups of the population still lived in rented accommodation and, above all, in conditions of extreme privation. This statement is true particularly for the immigrants dealing with a housing rent market becoming more and more limited and irregular especially in the urban areas where immigrants strongly concentrated. Table: Percentage of families owning their own dwellings ,8% % % % ,5% Fonte: Istat, Censimento, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991 Istat, Indagine Multiscopo sulle Famiglie. Aspetti della vita quotidiana, 2000, Roma, During the 1980s, the question of social exclusion assumed even more serious forms closely connected with housing. As Ventura (2001: 140) points out, by the end of the 1970s, after almost twenty years of research and debate promoted by ANCSA, very few buildings and rehabilitation programmes had been undertaken by local authorities or national government. There was a general lack of social objectives and most municipalities had shown themselves unable to manage the complicated sequence of research, global investigation of the old parts of their towns, planning, design and execution. Moreover, the saturation of large metropolitan areas diverted the attention of private owners and investors to the renewal of extensive obsolete and abandoned industrial districts located in and around the centre (for example, Lingotto in Turin and Bicocca in Milan). In particular, we can observe three elements characterising the emerging housing problem in the 1980s: - the worsening of aspects connected with economic poverty: crowding and decay of dwellings; - signs of decline in the quality of life caused by environmental and urban decay; - new impoverishment processes, involving new social figures and characterised by housing exclusion, like the homeless (IRS, 1994: 7-11). In this period, the housing problem could therefore be considered as one of the most critical factors in poverty. Nevertheless, traditional kinds of intervention provided for in social policies and mainly based on structural implementation were far from being able to deal with it. Housing policies with a more social perspective were necessary to combat social exclusion. In particular, there was an urgent need to react also by re-defining the role of welfare with a view to formulating new policies for tackling poverty and housing problems conjointly. Today, the crisis of the informal networks as a resolution of the social marginality, the non residual characters of the emerging needs and the territorial concentration in the peripheries of new forms of poverty also for the Italian case - even if ghettos in the classical terms are not existing - make it necessary to develop urban policies finalised to integrate more traditional planning strategies with innovative social intervention at the local level (Avarello, 2001: 8). 4

5 1.2. The last two decades: the need for a multi-sectorial approach In Europe, the last two decades have witnessed a profound evolution in the more consolidated forms of action in the urban context. The traditional sequential process of analysis, the identification of a potential approach and the evaluation, choice and implementation of the project to be adopted, has been substituted by a recursive process of defining the problem, gathering proposals, opening arenas for concert and negotiation, promoting reciprocal trust and confidence, and re-defining the program and its implementation. This model of an integrated multi-actorial, inter-institutional, participatory approach as a new form of local intervention in addressing problems of urban material decay, social polarisation and exclusion, and lack of development has assumed an increasingly important role in the urban policies of most European countries, whereas in Italy the experimenting with forms of local action has not followed a linear path (Padovani, 2000: 2-3). In fact, the model applied in Italy is more a constellation of initiatives taken by different public institutions that have introduced either general procedural innovations or specific programmes of action. In particular, within this constellation of actors-actions, because of their commitment to environmental issues or to fighting social exclusion and providing training, non-profit organisations have played an important role in increasing interest in integrated multi-sectorial forms of urban action. As Padovani (2000, pp. 4-7; 2002) shows, the propensity to try out innovative practices has been facilitated by the fact that, since the early 1990s, Italy has been characterised by institutional innovation and new practices of negotiated co-operation between public bodies. Among these processes of institutional and experimental innovation, four areas stand out. 1. At the parliamentary level, the process of reform of local government and the public administration was initiated with two important bills passed in 1990, and further developed in a 1996 act introducing the concept of negotiated programming and in a 1997 reform of the public administration known as the Bassanini Law. The reform has produced two main results. First of all, the process of redefining competencies has given more power to local government authorities (mayors are now directly elected). One might say that the reforms have recognised the importance of territory in defining public policies. Secondly, interesting new possibilities have opened up in favour of an approach more oriented towards negotiation and co-operation. Within this scheme, new tools have been introduced, such as accordo di programma, (program agreement), conferenza di servizi, (meetings for program evaluation by public entities), società miste (joint public and private municipal companies). Along the same lines, the 1996 Act introduced the concept of negotiated programming. 2. The Territorial Pacts began with the first experimental phase promoted and managed by the CNEL (the National Council of Economy and Labour) and then continued with their institutionalisation under the Ministry of the Treasury. Programmes are based on the strategic mobilisation of four main actors: newly elected mayors, representatives of industry and the workers, various business interests and the banks. These are then called upon to work together in identifying objectives, priorities, means, and roles. Five parameters have been established as standards to be met in the planning process between local actors for defining a Territorial Pact. 3. A range of interventions have occurred in support of job placement or the creation of new jobs and of the fight against poverty and social alienation involving various ministries including those of Labour, Social Affairs, and the Interior (among them flexibility in employment contracts, a minimum wage, vocational training, day-care and youth projects). In urban upgrading programmes that provide for important measures from an economic and social point of view, various forms of partnership have been experimented with. 4. The promotion of integrated programmes for urban upgrading was proposed and implemented first by the administration of the CER (Housing Committee) and then by the Direzione generale del Coordinamento Territoriale (Territorial Co-ordination Department) of the Ministry of Public Works. Since 1992, five successive schemes have been implemented: 5

6 Programmi integrati (Integrated Programmes); Programmi di recupero urbano (Urban Renewal Programmes - December 1994) addressing the problems of rundown public housing estates; Programmi di riqualificazione urbana (Urban Upgrading Programmes - December 1994) addressing urban areas with problems of industrial closures and urban decay 1 ; Contratti di quartiere (Neighbourhood Contracts - introduced in 1997) to cope with public housing estates with serious problems in terms of urban quality and social exclusion 2 ; and Programmi di recupero urbano e di sviluppo sostenibile (Urban Upgrading and Sustainable Development Programmes ) 3. These programmes are conceived as a new tool available to municipal administrations for renewing segments of the city suffering from urban decay and social distress. Three main innovative elements may be identified in them: a) the promotion of new forms of partnerships in the design and implementation of a project; b) the integration between interventions on buildings and those on infrastructures, services and open spaces; and c) the timing of the project to be shared in and subscribed to by all the actors involved. Furthermore, a programme must encompass several urban functions, from housing to manufacturing or service activities; provide for several forms of building intervention including works of urbanisation, house building and urban rehabilitation and, if necessary, new construction; open the project to bids from several public and private entities and several public and private financial resources, insisting on the coexistence of a mix of actors and public and private resources as an important condition for making the programme an integrated one; guarantee that the area affected by the programme is wide enough to have an impact on urban redevelopment The emerging context: towards new experimentation Padovani (2000: 10) points out that it is not easy and may be not very important to evaluate the above-mentioned different initiatives undertaken over the last decade in the various areas of public action. And this is probably not very necessary here. However, what seems important to note are two things: first, the more open climate towards experimentation in forms of partnerships between public and private third sector actors induced by this constellation of public actions and, second, a growing interest in the role that can be played by local integrated actions in the management of urban transformation and in local development. A variety of applications of the concept of local integrated action has been developed ranging from the Territorial Pact to Urban Upgrading Programmes, Neighbourhood Contracts and the PIC (Programma di Iniziativa Comunitaria) Urban. It is evident that there is a deep concern to improve the negotiating capabilities within the public sector, above all, with regard to measures for reforming public administration. It is in this climate that new space has been opened up for interaction between public actors and between public and private actors and that new ways to formalise these interactions have been tried out. For example, Ombuen (2001: 3) indicates the increased collaboration of public and private actors in the use of project financing for the realisation of public work. In general, by taking into account the different public institutions promoting the various kinds of actions or programmes, it was possible to identify specific categories of opportunities and partnerships also if the innovative impetus did not always generate a concrete collaboration between the actors. As a matter of fact, in some cases, Urban was more an opportunity of experiments (learning by doing) than a formal application of a standard model. Moreover, the experience of Urban constituted a very important example for the implementation of other Italian urban programmes - PRUSTT (Programmi di recupero urbano e di sviluppo sostenibile) in 1 1,100 billion lire of public funding for an investment of 5,000 billion lire. 254 proposals were presented and 74 projects were approved billion lire of public funding. 123 proposals were presented, 83 selected at the regional evaluation level and 55 selected and financed at the central government level billion lire of public funding. More than 400 proposals were submitted for evaluation. 6

7 particular - as well as for Urban itself. Many progress have been done going from Urban I ( ) to Urban II ( ) (Campagna, 2002: 11). 2. The Urban Community Initiative in the Italian Context In the previous pages we have pointed out the progress at the institutional level that has objectively characterised the evolution of the Urban Policies in Italy since the 90. It is now worthwhile to combine this analysis with a synthesis of the relation published by the Ministry of Public Works ( about the same issues in order to have a more complete background to refer at for describing the development of Urban Development Programmes in our country, Urban in particular Remarks on Urban Policies in Italy in the early 1990s. The predominance of infrastructural oriented urban policies The picture painted in broad outline in the previous section is one in which regional and national government in Italy is attempting to formulate strategies and implement policies for intervention in the country s urban areas. It needs to be pointed out here that these are in fact more attempts than effective policies since, as the large amount of legislation passed in the past decade shows, there is in Italy the lack of an integrated plan for interventions based on a clearly defined programme. A further reason is the fragmentation of responsibility for intervention in urban areas among the various levels of government. As a rough guide we can say that, very schematically speaking, the responsibility as regards policies and interventions in cities and urban areas is divided up between at least three horizontal political-institutional levels - state, regions, local authorities (the latter subdivided into provincial and municipal) - and then among numerous vertical sections on each of these levels, which it is not always possible to get to work together in a co-ordinated and integrated fashion. Leaving aside the purely financial aspects (the province of the Ministries of the Treasury and of the Budget), in central government the main (technical-sectorial) responsibilities are divided up between the following Ministries: Public Works, Environment, Transport, Cultural Heritage (above all through the single offices), Labour and the Interior (responsible for political-administrative aspects and social emergencies intervention). In the past, the attempt was made to co-ordinate the various central government bodies - absolutely essential in order to formulate and implement a systematic policy for intervention in urban areas - by means of new juridical instruments (programmatic agreements between the various government bodies) or within the competent interministerial committees (e.g. the CIPE, Committee of Ministers for Economic Planning, or the CIPET, now eliminated). Nonetheless, the objective difficulties involved in co-ordination, the emergence and the growing importance of specific problems related to urban areas led at the end of the 1980s (1987) to the setting up of a special Department for Urban Areas attached to the Prime Minister s Office and run by a Minister without portfolio for urban area problems. It was the first important institutional act bearing witness to the growing awareness of the need to formulate specific policies in favour of cities and urban areas in Italy. However, the problem of the fragmentation, overlapping or indeterminacy regarding areas of competence is no less marked at the lower institutional levels - regions and local authorities. It concerns both the relations between different hierarchical levels (e.g. in the case of the adoption of the General Urban Development Schemes, and other urban and territorial planning instruments, such as transport schemes, etc.) and the planning, implementation and management of sectorial interventions; just consider the situation in the field of education and training, which is divided up between municipalities, or sub-municipal bodies, provinces, regions and state. 7

8 In this context, the outlines and general principles of the policies and legislative measures adopted (or at least proposed or initiated) up until now by the Italian Government as regards urban areas are relatively clear. First of all, we need to distinguish between two main sets of guiding principles and kinds of measures: - those aimed at addressing the question of the institutional set-ups and those of a politicaladministrative nature for solving the above-mentioned serious problem of institutional, political and functional responsibilities; - those aimed at intervening in some (or all) of the concrete problems in the urban areas. That being said, the essential features of the policies (or at least the interventions) regarding urban areas can be summarised thus: 1) much attention has been paid to the institutional, prescriptive, administrative and politicalmanagerial aspects of urban policy in Italy; 2) in respect of measures directly affecting living conditions and problems in urban areas, interventions involving infrastructures have been clearly predominant (above all large-scale public works); 3) within the interventions in infrastructures, priority has been given to transport and mobility (chiefly, road transport, road networks and parking lots); 4) interventions aimed at dealing with other aspects of urban problems - unemployment, especially among the young, pollution, damage to the environment, hygiene risks and health emergencies, etc - have not in general been adopted within the framework of policies or measures specifically directed at urban areas in particular but, rather, within that of policies applied to sectors (support for artisans, services, etc), factors (training, technology, employment, etc) or areas (e.g. southern Italy). 5) interventions have been fragmentary, intermittent and frequently highly pinpointed (in the sense of being limited to a restricted territorial area or a single urban centre), confirming the difficulty of defining and implementing a unified strategy in which to insert them. We hardly need to be reminded that the most important interventions in urban areas are normally linked to specific events involving one city or another: the world football championship in 1990, the Columbus celebrations in Genoa in 1992, the G7 summit in Naples in 1994, to mention only the most recent instances; 6) considerable difficulties have been encountered in activating and furthering planned interventions according to the fixed schedules. Such difficulties can be put down to both technicalfinancial and political-administrative factors The main legislative measures for reducing deficiencies in the infrastructures of medium-large cities The best way to exemplify what has just been stated is to list, as a simple illustration, some of the main legislative measures adopted nationally in the last five to six years for dealing with the problems in the country s urban areas (living conditions, housing and construction of dwellings are not included here). As to interventions aiming to achieve institutional and administrative reorganisation, there are among others: - Decree Law of 10 November 1987, to set up the Department for Urban Areas under the Minister for problems concerning urban areas, nominated for the first time in the same period; and - Law 142/90 of 8 June 1990, a fundamentally important measure to set up, among other things, the metropolitan areas and reform the institutional and administrative structures of the system of local government and self-government. It should be pointed out that many of the most significant articles in this law have still to be implemented (the case, for example, of the metropolitan areas and municipalities). 8

9 Regarding interventions at the level of infrastructures, the following are only a small sample of the most important: - Law 122/89 of 24 March 1989: Provisions concerning parking lots (three-year programme for the most densely populated urban areas, etc.); - Law 205/89 of 29 May 1989: Interventions in the infrastructures of areas involved in the 1990 world football championship (more commonly known as world cup law ); - Law 246/89 of 5 July 1989: Urgent interventions to rehabilitate and develop the city of Reggio Calabria ; - Law 396/92 of 15 December 1990: Interventions in favour of Rome, capital of the Republic ; - Law 208/91 of 28 June 1991: Interventions for the construction of cycleways and pedestrian paths in urban areas ; - Law 211/92 of 26 February 1992: Interventions in the rapid mass transport systems sector ; - Law 99/92 of 18 March 1992: Urgent interventions for works connected with the Columbus 92 international exposition ; - Interventions connected with the Jubilee 2000 celebrations (a legislative provision was made to guarantee financial backing). Previously, there had been ad hoc measures along the same lines for other urban areas or cities (e.g. Ancona, Naples, etc.), possibly within legislative provisions having more general or apparently different objectives (finance bills, interventions related to earthquakes, general policy laws or environmental programmes, etc.). Moreover, this practice is still continuing if we consider, for instance, the way the interventions for the Mediterranean Games have been financed through extraordinary provisions for infrastructures specific to one or more cities - following the example of the world cup experience. In the case of the infrastructural measures and laws mentioned above: from those regarding parking lots and cycleways and the law for the capital Rome to, at least in part, that relating to the Columbus celebrations, long delays and serious difficulties have also been encountered in starting and carrying out the interventions. The picture painted above, therefore, shows that although government in Italy has been unable to formulate a fully unified strategy, the interventions adopted to deal with the problems of urban areas, often under the pressure of contingent or emergency situations, have aimed to make good the most serious deficiencies in the infrastructures of medium-large cities, above all in the area of transport. A further aim has been to construct a political-institutional set-up more in tune with actual developments in and requirements for governing urban areas. On the other hand, notwithstanding the efforts of individual cities in this direction, there has so far been an almost total lack of any significant attempt to implement, or at least plan, an integrated strategy that, alongside the interventions in infrastructures (public works), promotes interventions in the services sector in order to foster employment and economic activity The features of the PIC Urban in Italy: innovatory interventions linked to the social upgrading of urban areas It is within the overall picture of urban policies in Italy outlined above that we can appreciate the novel features of the PIC Urban compared with the guiding principles and modes of intervention that have become established. In fact, the problems of urban areas are addressed using an integrated approach involving interventions that trigger both the promotion of economic growth and local employment and the social development and integration of the weakest and most marginalised strata of the population resident in the intervention area. This is achieved by concentrating available financial resources in limited well-defined areas and on interventions that are, where possible, innovatory. All of this, on one side, provides a strong incentive to alter drastically the modes of intervention adopted up until now in Italy and, on the other, takes up in full the indications from the 9

10 considerations and debate on these themes underway in those circles that are most aware of and engaged in addressing the problems of the cities and urban areas. The PIC Urban in Italy essentially assimilates the suggestions and guidelines established by the initiative in question, in that it is in large part structured around integrated and territorially concentrated projects and displays a strong innovatory impetus, especially as regards intervention strategies and modes of implementation 4. For many of the medium-sized Italian cities in the areas included in Objective 1, the PIC Urban has provided them with their first opportunity to see how they fare with a diversified and integrated approach to resolving the problems of (limited) areas in their territory. Such attempts represent a very new factor in urban policies, especially in the South, and were certainly consolidating during implementation also by making use of the Technical Assistance, which helped, among other things, to improve integration and enhance the innovative side of the interventions. A further novel element that should be underlined is the effort on the part of nearly all local administrations to break with the practices of the past in which there was an almost exclusive concentration on intervention in infrastructures and the only instruments used to tackle the problems of the urban centres were those of urban development. In fact, although many of the proposed interventions are of the infrastructural kind or aimed at furthering employment and new economic activities along lines widely experimented in Italy and consistent with the interventions usually carried out, the added value of the Urban Community Initiative lies both in the broadening of the mix of interventions and their integration and in the search for effective involvement of the population and the various socio-economic actors at local level. As Avarello shows (2002: 32) urban policies in North Europe present nowadays specific features that seems to be significant also in the Italian (and South Europe, more in general) experiences. For example: - the convergence of specific sectors (like housing and social services) in a more integrated planning perspective, - the predominance of a contextual-territorial approach over a functional one, - the constitution of more autonomous decisional centre at the local level, begin to be a constitutive elements of the Urban Development Programmes and of the PIC Urban, in particular. In PIC Urban, long constructive negotiations with the local administrations were necessary, also in order to reach an adequate geographical concentration for the interventions. A considerable effort at clarification was needed so that the proposals were unhampered by the traditional approach of intervention policies in urban areas, often inspired by the criterion of equal shares for the various parts of the city. Consequently, it is also worth emphasising the innovative impact of this Urban Community Initiative in respect of the effort at concentrating available resources, the scarcity of which has usually placed local leaders in a situation of having to overcome the obstacle of the negative reactions from that part of the population, often the large majority, in the remaining city areas not benefiting from the PIC Urban interventions. It is only due to the constraints of the PIC Urban, to the constant dialogue with the competent national and community governing bodies and services and, subsequently, to a more thorough understanding of the objectives that it has been possible to achieve the goal of interventions that are innovative, integrated and territorially concentrated. As many studies and analyses suggest (Dicoter and Diap, 2002), even if with differences, city by city, the experience of PIC Urban in Italy can be considered as a very important and successful one from several point of view: - in improving competences and effectiveness of the local actors operating in the public administration and dealing with urban policies, 4 For an intermediate report on urban project implementation see European Commission, Urban Community Initiative - Summary Descriptions of Operational Programmes, October

11 - in stimulating comparative analysis and best practices exchanges, involving different Italian cities and regarding alternative patterns of managing Urban - in generating a culture of the urban re-qualification comparable with the more developed tradition of urban policies promoted in other European countries, - in contributing to define a European model as an alternative to other approaches in USA, Latin America, Japan. Urban renewal policies in Italy have been traditionally characterised by fragmented, sectorial, non co-ordinated and voluntary actions and, for a long time, mainly oriented towards improving housing conditions without paying attention to urban factors linked with social exclusion in the more deprived neighbourhoods. Nevertheless, following the European example, the last two decades have witnessed a profound transformation in Italian urban policies in terms of more integrated actions and variety of interventions. The general improvement in housing and infrastructures in Italian cities has also determined the necessity to promote a territorially concentrated policy for tackling specific socio-residential problems in specific urban contexts. PIC Urban is only one of the programme developed in Italy in the 90, but for several reasons it is the most innovative and, for some cities, the most important opportunity to improve housing and living conditions in distressed neighbourhoods. Many critics are moved to PIC Urban. For example: - In general, PIC Urban in Italy did not sufficiently help the real re-qualification of the cities in social terms but still in infrastructural terms, - the territorial distribution of urban problems, the lack of ghettos, made difficult to apply the PIC Urban model to the Italian case, moreover in some cities the poorest neighbourhood were not involved in the programmes. - in some situations PIC Urban accelerated the process of gentrification of the specific part of neighbourhood and, simultaneously, the persistence of problematic situations. - partnership between public and private actors was not enough improved and, when established, it was mainly with actors operating in the building sector, - the insistence on local intervention, especially at the infrastructural level, has displaced the attention from the necessity of more articulated and co-ordinated urban policies defined at national level and oriented to improve social conditions in the Italian urban areas. Nevertheless, PIC Urban generated, for the first time, in the public administration as well in the private sector a sort of know how and improved a set of capabilities in co-operation and dealing with integrated problems that will be very useful for the management of forthcoming initiatives in the urban policies (Fontana, 2002: 10). In some cases PIC Urban was a chance for local government to improve not only the quality of life in selected neighbourhoods but also for developing marketing actions for the entire city and to attract new resources. Finally, as we already mentioned, the experience of PIC Urban constituted a very important example for the implementation of other Italian urban programmes as well as for the second wave of PIC Urban itself. Italian cities involved in PIC Urban 1 and 2. PIC Urban 1 ( ): Genoa, Venice, Rome, Naples, Salerno, Foggia, Bari, Cosenza, Reggio Calabria, Palermo, Catania, Syracuse, Cagliari. PIC Urban 2: ( ): Turin, Milan, Genoa, Carrara, Pescara, Caserta, Taranto, Mola di Bari, Crotone, Misterbianco. 11

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