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POLITECNICO DI TORINO Repository ISTITUZIONALE Urban/rural co-productions. Planning and governance approaches for improving the relationships among city and countryside in Italy and England Original Urban/rural co-productions. Planning and governance approaches for improving the relationships among city and countryside in Italy and England / Lazzarini, Luca. - (2019 Jan 21). Availability: This version is available at: 11583/2723384 since: 2019-01-22T19:47:59Z Publisher: Politecnico di Torino Published DOI:10.6092/polito/porto/2723384 Terms of use: Altro tipo di accesso This article is made available under terms and conditions as specified in the corresponding bibliographic description in the repository Publisher copyright (Article begins on next page) 11 October 2021 In the cover page: Diego Mayon, Grey Grass “Grey Grass is a photographic survey on the East of Milan, Italy. The work focuses on the transformation of the countryside during the four years before Expo Milano 2015, and completed in the following year, 2016. Around a thousand hectares of fertile agricultural land were swept away to build two new highways, involving many local farmers and threatening the survival of the lombard agriculture”. Source: diegomayon.com/grey-grass/ 2 Doctoral Dissertation Doctoral Program in Urban & Regional Development (XXXI Cycle) Urban / rural co-productions Planning and governance approaches for improving the relationships among city and countryside in Italy and England Luca Lazzarini Supervisors: Prof. Giuseppe Cinà, DiST/Polytechnic University of Turin, IT Dr. Matthew Reed, CCRI/University of Gloucestershire, UK, Co-Supervisor Doctoral Examination Committee: Prof. Anna Maria Colavitti, Referee, University of Cagliari, IT Prof. David Fanfani, Referee, University of Florence, IT Prof. Angela Barbanente, Referee, Polytechnic of Bari, IT Prof. Gabriel Pascariu, Referee, University “Ion Mincu”, RO Prof. Umberto Janin Rivolin, Referee, Polytechnic University of Turin, IT Polytechnic University of Turin December 2018 This thesis is licensed under a Creative Commons License, Attribution – Non- commercial – No-Derivative Works 4.0 International: see www.creativecommons. org. The text may be reproduced for non-commercial purposes, provided that credit is given to the original author. I hereby declare that, the contents and organisation of this dissertation constitute my own original work and does not compromise in any way the rights of third parties, including those relating to the security of personal data. ………………………………..... Turin, December 14th, 2018 4 Summary The thesis explores the relationship among local governments’ cooperation and planning policies in two domestic contexts, Italy and England. The purpose is to investigate the relational politics, processes and practices of cooperation by which local governments can shape planning policies addressed to improve the contribution of agricultural production in building stronger ties among city and countryside. The research problematized this topic by looking at the planning actions and interactions, connection and disconnections among local governments in two domestic contexts, Italy and England, and in three cases of contrasting administrative and geographical size and configuration: the metropolitan area of Milan, the Aso Valley in Marche region and the City Region of Bristol. The thesis adopts a qualitative research methodology, in which the data collection relies mainly on a series of semi-structured interviews, addressed to institutional actors and civil society representatives, and a documentary analysis on reports and official planning documents. A further methodology employed by the research is the scenario-making, which is used for evolving the planning and governance processes of the three case studies towards more effective collaborative arrangements. In the metropolitan area of Milan, the two forms of cooperation investigated within the space of the South Agricultural Park —the Park Authority and the Rural Districts— although spatially overlapping and sharing a common space of action, they have not established any significant relationship yet and they have been expressing two different planning rationales. While the Park Authority’s planning policy has a narrow focus on land-use regulation due to important financial and management constraints, the Rural Districts have shown a high transformative potential which has conveyed a process of critical reconnection between food consumers and producers across the urban/rural continuum. In the Aso Valley, a number of spaces of cooperation among local governments and civil society, which intersect and overlay, can be recognised. They have constructed a collaborative landscape of variable geometries where local actors have promoted a strategic and forward thinking towards local development. These cooperative geometries have resulted in reformulating the urban/rural dichotomy into a multifunctional and strongly interdependent countryside. Current challenges lie in guiding local governments to construct a consistent and efficient joint planning policy able to express a coherent vision of development for the whole valley. In the City Region of Bristol, the relevant issues of transparency and accountability raised by the Local Enterprise Partnership —the newly business- led inter-municipal body established in 2011 by central government— come together with a planning policy only addressed to housing and infrastructure demands. The result is that, in the process of delivering new developments, the Plan has discarded the quality of agricultural land and the location of green and blue infrastructures. Hence, it has originated negative impacts Urban/rural co-productions 5 on the agro-ecological resources of the city region and, more importantly, it has overlooked the contribution of the countryside in addressing city region’s social and economic growth. The study offers a contribution on planning research and practice by investigating three different governance and planning approaches to the issue of agricultural production within the urban/rural interface. What the three cases elicit is a delicate tension among city’s pressing social and economic needs and countryside’s unexploited contribution to more localised patterns of agricultural production. 6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank my two supervisors, Giuseppe Cinà and Matt Reed, for the continuous intellectual and personal support to my work. They have shown patience, confidence and understanding, and they gave me precious feedbacks for shaping the contents and the approach taken by this thesis. A special mention goes to Liam for believing in what I do, for tolerating the unusual life rhythm of a PhD student and for holding up the many commitments and the travels around Europe without getting too angry. I am also grateful to Marco Mareggi for the support on what I do and for the harsh, but always fertile, critiques on my research work. I would like to acknowledge the institution that allowed me to become what I am today, the Inter-university Department of Urban and Regional Studies and Planning (DIST) of the Polytechnic University of Turin. Thanks also to the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) of University of Gloucestershire (UK) for hosting me as a visiting PhD student and for giving me the opportunity to present my research and get useful hints from a very inspiring audience. Thanks to all the members of DIST that have supported me during my career with their emotional understanding and esperiential feedbacks, especially Benedetta Giudice, Massimiliano Granceri, Giuditta Soccali, Qi Mu and Merve Demiroz. These three years have been full of passionate and fruitful encounters and exchanges with researchers, local administrators, public officers from the whole Europe. I would like to thank them all for sharing their knowledge and their perspectives on reality. Thanks to my friends that have been always there to fill my free time with a lot of fun, in particular Simone Giorgetta, Stefano Crespi, Andrea Pesaresi, Guido Benigni, Minoo Javareshkian, Ambrogio Moretti and Chiara Di Pentima. Last but not least, I feel my PhD would have not been the same without the group of students and researchers of Laboratorio del Cammino. I am grateful to Cristiana Rossignolo for believing in this crazy project. Serena Marchionni and Daniele Cinciripini are the sources of tireless energy, creativity and sincerity from which I learnt a lot on how to take the best from this world. The two experiences, the ViaSalaria and the Summer School “Sicilia coast to coast”, and the 500 km of distance walked in two years, have been two fundamental steps for me to grow as a researcher. This work is dedicated to my family that has never stopped to believe in me and in what I do, the strongest support a researcher can get during his or her PhD career. Urban/rural co-productions 7 8 Contents Introduction 19 Theoretical foundations 21 Research motivations, goals and methodology 24 The structure of thesis 28 PART 1. THEORIES AND APPROACHES 31 1. Genesis, profiles and trajectories of Local governments’ cooperation 33 1.1. Current trends and challenges of Local governments 34 1.1.1. Devolution and rescaling processes in a period of austerity 33 1.1.2. Local governments in Europe: diversity and historical embeddedness 36 1.1.3. Gaps between territorial and institutional profiles 38 1.1.4. Amalgamation vs. Cooperation: the search for efficiency 40 1.2. Local governments in cooperation: forms, approaches and