Whatever happened to planning? Italy after EU intervention

As clearly stated by the Conference’s proposal, after a decade of European urban and spatial policies, it seems the time now for a deeper reflection on their influences in spatial and urban planning practices in the EU countries. A brief survey on what concerns Italy allows us to observe that EU planning intervention has affected practically all the levels of territorial government, through many dimensions of what is first and foremost a material innovation, triggered as if by contamination by the arrival on the scene of the new institutional player. Changes are mainly visible in: – the shaping of spatial frameworks for planning policies; – the proliferation of new, different tools for regional and urban planning; – a progressive re-equilibrium between “central” and “peripheral” regions; – new institutional and administrative attitudes to negotiation and partnership; – the cultural way of treating urban problems and conceiving planning; – new emerging competences and “jobs” for planners. A reflection on the deepest meaning of those many changes – and, more generally, on the substantial reasons of the (not institutionalised) EU intervention in planning policies – could contribute to better understanding on what, not only in Italy, can be expected from EU planning and what, consequently, can be improved in European development strategies.