Description (EN): The Milano-Bologna urban region encompasses the metropolitan cities of Milan and Bologna and the provinces of Piacenza and Pavia, a strategic regional area across two of the most economically developed Regions in Italy. This area experiences important changes in terms of economic development. Actually, the whole area can be seen as a growth corridor inside which traditional economic development processes keep following the logic of agglomeration, but also as a growingly differentiated regional space where unexpected economic processes are investing unusual places and leaving behind or questioning historical patterns of centrality and competitiveness.
This functional area, despite being characterized by proximity and continuity is subdivided into two metropolitan cities, two provincial institutions and two Regions. There is no common governance framework able to deal with the challenges generated by the consequences of the above-mentioned socio-spatial and economic changes. Moreover, the absence of a common narrative in policy design and strategies – which can also be called a lack of spatial imaginary - is a serious challenge for territorial cohesion as it risks producing much differentiated patterns of economic development, reinforcing old- or producing new territorial unbalances.
ESPON IMAGINE shall develop a common narrative as well as the basis for an integrated territorial strategy within the Milan-Bologna area, addressing most recent economic trends and their territorial impacts. The main outcome should be a concrete list of recommendations and support mechanisms in each stakeholder territory.
In the longer term, the objective is to turn informal coordination into more formalized cooperation to establish joint spatial scenarios and policies, eventually delivering an experimental Integrated Territorial Investment proposal.
Read more Achievements (EN): Today’s era might be defined as one of regional urbanization, one in which urban regions are substituting cities on the international economic scene and in their roles in the world economy. New hierarchies are emerging calling in to play apparently distant territories, facing unprecedented and unexpected roles in the spatial reorganisation of capitalism. This fact concurs with the transcalar production of the urban and the emergence of new power relations between places. In this context, "Infrastructural Corridors" like the one between Milano and Bologna, capable of compressing time-space distances and directly influencing social and economic uses of large scales of space, are at the centre of new attention as the catalyst of territorial development at the regional scale.
Indeed, these processes of regional reorganization are not neutral: they produce uneven and unprecedented geographies of differentiation that contribute to new space of conflicts and unbalances, but also to new territorial protagonism and political dynamics. Cities and metropolitan areas are experiencing relevant processes of economic restructuring whose scale and nature are so consistent and unique that their governing authorities are hardly able to deal with both the premises and consequences of such a change. There is indeed a growing gap between consolidated forms of governance and the nature, rhythm, and dimension of socio-spatial economic change: which is the cause of a lack of both strategic visions and governance framework for policymakers, who are, therefore, unable to react to and deal with the growing
economic differentiation between places and the emergence of, along with new competitiveness patterns, new forms of marginalization and peripheralization.
As it is evident, these processes of ungoverned regionalization can seriously threaten territorial cohesion. Moved by this concern, expressed by stakeholders, ESPON promoted the IMAGINE targeted analysis to explore the regionalization processes ongoing in the territory between Milano and Bologna, focusing on the influence of the HSR corridor on social and economic dynamics.
Three primary lines of actions explain the purposes of ESPON IMAGINE.
1. First, IMAGINE created a relevant base of spatial knowledge and identified territorial narratives and common analytical frameworks regarding the regional urbanization processes in one of the most economically and socially dynamic urban regions in Italy, the Milano-Bologna urban area. This wide urbanised area is only limitedly recognised and managed as a functional integrated urban region, despite supported by an historical infrastructural corridor, enhanced by the recent completion of an HSR offer. The research identified patterns of regional integration, positive trends, threats, and challenges to regional governance and planning.
2. Second, IMAGINE developed and tested new territorial narratives and governance frameworks, new visions, and imaginaries for the urban region Milano-Bologna through the active engagement of institutional stakeholders and territorial actors. These are expected to enable new
opportunities for territorial alliances between places, based upon new integrated approaches that could include metropolitan cities, together with in-between provincial authorities, exploring the potentialities of informal coordination and moving toward more formalized, strategic cooperation.
3. Finally, IMAGINE elaborated and generated scenarios of regionalization for the Milano-Bologna urban region to foster a co-design process of policy recommendations with stakeholders. In this perspective, the project explored the potential of Integrated Territorial Initiatives as a governance tool for regionalization processes and proposed specific key lessons to be applied in context as well as general policy recommendations that could be eventually replicated in other European urban regions or in other territories characterized by the presence of infrastructural corridors.
The European dimension has been researched considering the broader EU policy context shaped by strategic documents as the EU Cohesion policy 2021-2017, the Territorial Agenda 2030, the EU Green Deal, the Resilience and Recovery Plans, and the New Leipzig Charter.
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Expected Results (EN): The main outcomes of this project should be:
- An overview and a mapping of existing cooperation / coordination / initiatives / functional complementarities within the Milan Bologna functional area;
- A case study on the Milan-Bologna high-speed rail providing an overview of main challenges and potentialities related to the transportation system within the functional area;
- A step-by-step strategy for implementing the relevant spatial integration scenario, following the priorities identified and including the use of the relevant tools.
The project should also answer the following key policy questions:
- What are the main drivers (economic, social, spatial, environmental, technological, political etc.) and actors that are likely to shape spatial development and integration of the Milano-Bologna territory in the near future?
- What are the current potential blocking factors for developing an interrelated spatial imaginary in policy design and strategies (in terms of bureaucratic barriers, governance, financial and administrative capacities)?
- What have been the impacts in terms of territorial integration of the development of Milano high-speed rail? Broadly, to what extent mobility and connectivity could constitute a key factor in a successful integration of the functional area?
- Does the shift in economic activity in the urban region reconfigure the spatial equilibrium between metropolitan cities and their in-between provincial territories?
- How to tackle territorial inequalities when agglomeration effects are consolidating cumulative economic growth reinforcing the central-periphery patterns?
- Which territorial sustainable and inclusive development scenarios within the Milano-Bologna functional area develop, taking into account the shift in the economic activity and the changing role of territorial authorities?
- Which policy tools and governance approaches can be useful and sensible to plan and manage spatial development at Milano-Bologna functional scale? How relevant would be the ITI tool as a new form of coordination in that territorial framework?
- To what extent the different stakeholders involved in this process are willing and are able to contribute to a potential ITI (or other more relevant tool identified) preparation and implementation?
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