Territorial Policies and Urban Dimension

Abstract

The paper is focused on the examination of the “state of the territories” in Italy, in particular on how the core-periphery relationship has evolved. With the decision to extend the Savoy 1859 legislation to the new unitary State many consequences have derived, such as the centralization, guaranteed by the reunion into one person of the function of Prime Minister and the function of Minister of the Interior and by a rigid system of controls. The Republican Constitution of 1948 has dismissed the model in favor of institutional pluralism. Only at the end of twentieth century decades of profound changes in administration have started. First, the institution of the Regions (1970): regional laws, in fact, immediately register the change and use a new language. The change is based on the awareness that the cities have become the engines of economic growth, thanks to their policies of welcoming, job opportunities, and others. The new method is articulated in different areas: social housing policies, urban regeneration policies, landscape care. The housing need pushes the State lawmakers to draw up plans, such as the 2009 National Housing Plan. In the spaces left by the State intervention, the Regions can elaborate programs of urban regeneration. Landscape and territory, once considered antagonistic, are reconciled in the Code of Cultural heritage and landscape approved in 2004. The Code sets out now a relationship between landscape protection and urban law in more complex and profound terms, very far from the original indifference, and open an essential dialogue for the implementation of the EU principle of political and territorial cohesion.