A Flexible and at “Variable-Geometry” Planning for Italian Metropolitan Cities: The Case of Reggio Calabria and the “Area dello Stretto”

Abstract

The Law No. 56/2014 provided for the constitution of 14 metropolitan cities in Italy and established that the boundaries of these should coincide with those of the old Provinces. This choice has generated various perplexities since an institutional fixed border risks not to correspond with the geographical and territorial realities; in fact, today there are Metropolitan Cities under-dimensioned with respect to the real extension of the metropolitan area and others whose perimeter goes far beyond the metropolitan area, including also large rural territories and park areas. The thesis we intend to develop in the paper is that the boundaries of a metropolitan area may vary depending on the point of view, i.e. the role and meaning assigned to the metropolitan city and the goals that its institution must pursue; that is, if the metropolitan city is an instrument to optimize the relational flows within the territory between the central urban area and its hinterland (as it was conceived in the past) or, on the contrary, as the urban policy of the European Union seems to indicate, if its main role is to be a “development engine”, a privileged place for research and innovation. However, the need to keep the two aspects together, to foster economic development and to reorganize the territory in functional terms, requires the construction of flexible planning systems, capable of responding to the complexity of the required objectives and taking into account that different goals may correspond to different territorial boundaries; a plan that the paper indicates as at “variable geometry” and that concerns both territorial and strategic planning.