Innovation in Urban Policy: The Experience of Italian Urban Time Policies

Abstract

ABSTRACT Urban time policies are public policies that intervene in the time schedules and time organization that regulate human relationships at the urban level. Urban time policies were launched in Italy at the end of the 1980s. Within a span of 10 to 15 years, 170 municipalities have been involved in time-oriented projects or timetable plans, or in studies of urban social time. There has also been a diffusion into several countries of the European Union, especially in Germany and France. Now the diffusion is starting in Spain, the Netherlands and Belgium. In this article, the development of urban time policies in Italy is reviewed up to the new national law of 2000. The article examines how urban and social time emerged as a new theme of public policy, and the way it has been translated into public actions. In Italy, 15 years of experience and a new national law brought urban planners, sociologists and policy makers to think over the role of these city actions and over the nature of innovation in these policies. In conclusion, the article underlines the innovative aspects of Italian urban time policies (urban and social time became a new way to examine urban transformations and a new stake for urban policies; it offered an integrated approach to planning management; experimentation has been the driver of innovation) and how urban time policies can be considered an enrichment of traditional town planning (they offered a wider problem solving articulation acting also on timetables; they provided a new concept, chronotopes, to study and design urban transformation and, finally, they encouraged social, political and institutional capacity-building in urban action and planning).