The unaccomplished quest for urban policies in Italy. Waiting for Godot in the country of one hundred cities

Abstract

Over the last decade, the Italian scientific debate has intensively discussed and lamented the lack of a specific and explicit national policy framework for urban areas in Italy. The country is suffering since decades from the frailty or absence of a clear strategy to tackle the urban question and explicitly support cities to cope with it. This chapter critically illustrates the current situation as the outcome of a complex interplay between different factors, shedding light on some of the structural characteristics that the Italian case shares with other European countries. In particular, it focusses on the consequences of such a fragmented and disperse focus on cities, exploring in particular the new cycle of explicit urban policies launched since 2010. The chapter illustrates such a fragmented and unclear situation, from three different perspectives: the lack of an explicit urban agenda and the current manifold efforts to generate a policy debate, the impact of the current cycle of EU cohesion policy and its limited capacity to influence policy mobility, and finally, the recent initiatives promoted by the national government and the unaccomplished expectations towards a national urban policy.

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