New territorial dimension of public policies to improve territory and municipal services and to promote local development strategy and planning new tools

Abstract

The reform that nowadays concerns administrative territories reinforces the need to promote a new dimension for the management of territories and planning actions, which is different from the current one. In particular, supra-municipal space and inter-municipal cooperation can be considered the best solution to create a new organization of urban and rural areas and to ensure an efficient and effective management of public utilities.

In this sense, as the Strategy of Internal Areas specifies, it is clear the need, above all in disadvantaged territories, to combine local development actions with effective and efficient services, which become an important precondition.

This relationship should allow the development of local strategies whose implementation raises, first of all, the issue of territorial perimeters which must be considered.

Even though it is difficult to define unique perimeters for the implementation of overall territorial projects and for the territorial management which includes different administrative levels, a methodological approach that considers territories as from the combination between local development policies and the management of services and basic functions can be completely shareable.

Starting from a first distinction of services and functions based on their relationship and their influence on local policies (for example mobility, social services, education, territorial government that can be defined as preconditions), the next step is to achieve an integrated interpretation between areas influenced by services and morphological, dimensional, cultural, historical and relational features of territories. The goal is the definition of a possible scenario of stability for management and planning actions: it allows to identify supra-municipal areas that are able to find a strategy in which preconditions are connected with the local development in such a way  that policies can really take place.

With this purpose, first of all the paper looks for a possible answer about the examination of the current method to identify territorial perimeters for management and planning actions. Then these perimeters are interpreted in terms of means and forms of governance, giving rules, requirements and criteria that should be guidelines for the process of territorial reinterpretation currently in progress, aimed at a new territorialisation of public policies.

Moreover, this interpretation is enriched by some considerations about the challenge offered by new technologies and about how a widespread and structured use of ICTs could bring drastic changes to territories and to their new configurations at a supra-municipal level.

After a first conceptual-methodological overview, the operative reading will concern the Southern Regions of Puglia, Campania, Calabria and Basilicata: with reference to the last we will reach a possible new territorial arrangement in terms of design and management of perimeters, means and organizational forms.