Abstract
Territorial imbalances between catalysts of development and lagging areas are raising concerns in the majority of European regions. The divide between main urban nodes and marginal territories poses serious development challenges. The polarization of social, economic and cultural opportunities in urban areas and the phenomena of ageing, depopulation and impoverishment of inner areas are often the result of place-neutral, spatially-blind approaches to development, and constitute a hurdle towards the European objective of social, economic and territorial cohesion. In order to face these challenges, since a decade the European Union is pushing towards more place-based approaches to development, combining bottom-up and top-down logic within multilevel, multiactor and multifund context-sensitive processes. The experiences of the River Agreements and the National Strategy for Inner Areas represents interesting examples of the Italian take on the EU place-based logics, aiming at reversing the negative development trends that characterize the country’s marginal areas. Despite each presenting its own peculiarities, the two approaches share some common ground, as they both attempt to develop innovative, place-sensitive governance processes, featuring a participatory dimension and aiming at overcoming administrative and sectoral boundaries. This contribution discusses the potentials and limitations of the two approaches, with particular attention for the place-based flavour of the peculiar multilevel governance frameworks they adopt. The presented findings constitute an input to the debate on policies for the reactivation of marginal areas and the rebalance of territorial inequalities in a sustainable perspective.
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Notes
- 1.
Those territories are labelled by the strategy as “inner areas”. Inner areas typically feature small and sparsely populated settlements, and are affected by ageing, depopulation and impoverishment. At the same time, they often offer relevant environmental and cultural resources.
- 2.
Those classified as “Silver” by the Italian Rail Network manager.
- 3.
The CTAI is coordinated by the Department for the Cohesion Policy of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers, and involves a number of sectoral ministries. Moreover, in each project area regional, provincial and local authorities and stakeholders are involved in the CTAI.
- 4.
The legal conditions for municipalities’ aggregation depend on specific regional laws.
- 5.
The total budget devoted to the 37 areas that reached the implementation phase is €600 million. On average, the highest share of funding comes from ESIF, among which the main source is the European Regional Development Fund (Agenzia per la Coesione Territoriale 2019).
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Cotella, G., Vitale Brovarone, E., Voghera, A. (2021). Italy Testing the Place-Based Approach: River Agreements and National Strategy for Inner Areas. In: Bevilacqua, C., Calabrò, F., Della Spina, L. (eds) New Metropolitan Perspectives. NMP 2020. Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies, vol 178. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48279-4_11
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