Planning Innovation and Regional Development: the Spreading of Urban Strategic Planning in Southern Italy

Abstract

Spatial planning in Italy has experienced significant processes of inno- vation in the last 15 years, due to the growing devolution of powers from the national level both in legislative and operational terms. The paper aims to reconstruct the evolution of regional planning in Sicily, a region of the Italian Mezzogiorno which has experienced significant autonomy in the field of urban and regional policy. Through a critical review of the planning experiences carried out by various sectors of the regional administration, the paper discusses some critical question in the relationship between urban planning and sectoral planning and the role of physical planning in address- ing the regional development. In a context in which it is still prevailing a normative and regulatory ap- proach to planning, and without the more strategic and structural tools ex- perienced in other regions, the role of addressing regional development may be described as a puzzle of sectoral and unconnected strategies and policies. The paper argues that the lack of a structural and spatially in- formed vision of the regional territory is one of the reason (but not the on- ly) for the enduring weakness of regional development.