The polycentric vocation of European territories: Towards the construction of the Italian North West and other networking stories

In the last few years, thanks to the increased cooperation between nations and the enlargement process of the EU, the political debate on the European Spatial Development Perspectives (EU, 1999) has emphasized a more balanced competitiveness of the European territory combined with a growing importance of local and regional communities and their role in spatial development. One of the three key policy guidelines of European spatial development is the development of a balanced and polycentric urban system. It may be claimed that, recently, the notion of Polycentricity has become one of the themes most discussed by urban planners and Policy makers in Europe. Nevertheless, the analysis of the concept presents considerable difficulties: it is a key word in international spatial planning, but it is also a sort of a “plastikwort”12, a word without meaning. In fact the concept is often used in different contexts and with different meanings, but also “means different things to different people” (Davoudi, 2002, p. 114). This chapter concerns the key concept of Polycentricity and some problematic and connected issues related to the bottom up approach in the Polycentric model and the dissemination of EU lesson in terms of European Spatial Planning. The main objective of this chapter is the analysis of to what extent the Italian North West Macroregion represents a Polycentric model in relation to some European “self-evident” examples, as well as the analysis of some stories of European territories with a polycentric vocation in comparison with the Italian case. The chapter is structured in four parts. The first part describes the relations between networking and Polycentricity - different levels of networking and different polycentric urban configurations – and gives some definitions of Polycentricity related to different meanings and different spatial Scales of application. The second section describes the experience of the Italian North West Macroregion that a few years ago initiated a range of projects connected to the building of a polycentric development area. The third part examines the Italian North West Macroregion in comparison with some polycentric case studies resulting from recent research by ESPON (2.3.1 “Application and Effects of the ESDP in Member States”) with special attention to the relations between these case studies and the influence of European Spatial Planning. Finally, the conclusion seeks to provide evidence some topics concerning the importance of the “bottom up approach”, the application of Polycentricity at different spatial Scales and their added value, the challenges of the application, the relations with the “Europeanization process”, but also the problematic and weakness elements that can occur in the process of construction of a polycentric area. It should be clear that the issues that follow in this chapter take the ESDP as a guideline for polycentric development. However, in the knowledge of the limits of that approach, this chapter do not move from a critical analysis of the ESDP principles and their applications.