The spatial strategies of Italian regions

Spatial planning is undergoing radical changes all over Europe. As space is greatly affected by the intersection of processes of economic restructuring and institutional reorganisation, planning tools at different scales are required to reinvent their capacity to describe local identities, spatial relations and any form of territoriality. The increased complexity of territorial change, therefore, demands planning to reshape it as a cognitive process which is able to combine the designing of the future with the emergence of new, flexible and socially recognised conceptions of space and places. In this context, regions are no longer seen merely as a background for cultural identities or the state’s devolved functions but also as a spatial projection of relevant processes of social and political change. Europe, where regions have been invested of major roles in the project of economic integration and together with cities are considered the nodes of a polycentric model of development, provides a sharp picture of how regional planning can be influenced by shifts in the representation of local resources and the emergence of news form of territorial governance. This book tries to explore this process of change in planning by examining the cases of five Italian regions with different patterns of development. Through the lens of recent planning experiences, the authors provide a critical reconstruction of the making of spatial strategies in their historical and institutional contexts. These explorations of plans and policies on a regional scale give an original insight into the relationship between space representation, governance processes and planning tools, with the aim of supporting future debates from both a theoretical and a professional perspective.