Regional Reorganisation in Italy. Challenges and Changes

After an analysis of the attempts at reorganising local government in Italy over many decades, this chapter illustrates the most recent reforms prompted by the New Urban Agenda, which encourages the participation of cities in setting European policies. The chapter examines Italian laws, aimed at renewing the architecture of local institutions and transferring responsibilities from the provinces to the metropolitan cities in the case of large conurbations and to the unions of municipalities elsewhere. In particular the Delrio law (n. 56 of 2014) recognised the metropolitan cities as the “Urban Authority”, whose function was to improve the organisation of all the specific activities in the region of reference and to ensure a greater integration of services, in accordance with a consolidated paradigm that had been successful in many European countries. It sought to institute forms of innovation in urban government that would help to modernise local government in the country as a whole, an aim that was not fulfilled however, due to defects that were both inherent and methodological. Law 56 had been produced in a hurry in response to a spending review, and its selection of cities was guided by intrinsically political criteria rather than the rational parameters necessary for assessing which areas should be considered as having “metropolitan” importance. The result was the creation of weak institutions with an ambiguous and contradictory profile, aggravated by the absence of a coordinated national policy for cities that could provide them with an appropriate degree of autonomy and close the gap with respect to other European experiences.