Immigration Policies, Public Decision-making Processes and Urban Regeneration: The Italian Case

Several cities and regions in the world, through the implementation of adequate immigration and urban regeneration policies, have gradually succeeded in breaking the chains of path dependence and in rising again, like a Phoenix, from their own ashes. From steel and pollution capitals, they have become a symbol of innovation, sustainability and socio-economic regeneration, letting successfully coexist advanced techniques of industrial manufacturing and life quality. In Italy, however, any attempt to exploit and convert early industrialization areas has tragically failed because of the lack of a national strategy for strengthening and developing interconnections between urban areas of the country. This failure has had, moreover, serious effects on the territory, especially in the metropolitan areas of Southern Italy in which it is possible to see every day the implications of the lack of a specific funding system of local agencies for the government of extended areas (Provinces and Metropolitan Cities), an ineffective policy of prevention and prediction of environmental risks, an inoculated spatial planning and an increase in inequalities, in income and standard of living, leading to the exclusion and the marginalization of a growing number of citizens. In Italy, the real causes which prevent the regeneration of urban and suburban areas, or abandoned industrial areas, are not only of an economic, but also of a political nature, considering the acknowledged current inconclusiveness of public decision-making processes. The reflections on urban regeneration raise, in fact, the issues relating to the multi-level governance of these processes by various public subjects, according to the system of subsidiarity shared between State, Regions and Local Governments regulated by Articles 117 and 118 of the Italian Constitution in the matters of environmental protection, crisis management and industrial reconversion, urban planning and territorial governance, infrastructural networks, reorganization of local public services, economic and social welfare systems (social protection and inclusion, education and training). In all these competence areas, the institutional players move among constraints of spending review, public procurement and opportunities in the shared internal ownership of a wide variety of European funds. The complexity of coordinating these subsidiarity systems and heterogeneous policies is well evident in legislative reforms and in case law, which have concerned the start of the rehabilitation of polluted sites and the urban regeneration processes in Taranto and Bagnoli. To day, in fact, in Italy, a very complex legal framework regulates the plans and procedures of urban regeneration. This paper is intended to contribute to the ongoing debate between urban planners and regional scientists about the most appropriate techniques for managing these processes of urban regeneration and fostering the economic and social exploitation of territories, as well as the human development of people living in the areas concerned. For this purpose, we will try to identify the kind of role which can be played in this context by the policies of management of migratory flows, whose strategic value is today underrated, and by a greater openness of public decision-making processes, currently lacking in transparency and scarcely inclusive of citizens’ interests.