Francesco Lo Piccolo, Marco Picone, Filippo Schilleci — Italy

Abstract

1. Present Status of Planning The role of planning in Italy is now in crisis, and this crisis has been going on for more than a decade. As a consequence, planning practitioners face a hard time when trying to deal with the national political framework and to relate to most important topics, such as commons, public spaces, environmental threats, and so on. In the widespread context of the neoliberal turn, Italy has been experiencing a growing attraction towards everything that is private, and a strong rejection of all that is public. However, planning proficiencies are still requested in those cases where civil society activates bottom-up processes for local transformation projects. These processes often try to fill the gap that is caused by the lack of efficiency in traditional, top-down policies. The ever-growing number of local organizations, NGOs, insurgent practices, and the like are proof of the attention paid to these bottom-up (and often agonistic) practices, which are, however, rarely supported by national and local governments – while sometimes the actual support of national and local governments is utterly rejected as a matter of principle. The reasons for this weak or nonexistent support are linked to a rhetorical discourse that considers planning s a hindrance to the resolution of environmental and development issues and/or conflicts, rather than a proactive approach to the solution of the consequent problems. These general reflections can obviously be declined in different ways, based on local political peculiarities.