The role of intermediate territories for new sustainable planning and governance approaches. criteria and requirements for determining multi-municipal dimension: South Italy case

Abstract

In a context like the Italian one, in which the pulverization of Municipalities, the hyper-territorialization and the inadequacy of the current administrative network are the cause of ineffective and inefficient public policies, the paper investigates the close relationship between institutional and economic-territorial policies, through a comprehensive re-reading of the system of the organization of local authorities in Italy aimed, on the basis of some reading and interpretation criteria adopted, to identify more relevant territorial morphologies to ensure more advanced and effective forms of representation and government. The aim is to experiment with a possible methodology for reading the territories able to respond to the need to adapt the territorial structure of local authorities to the new challenges of modernity and economic-productive innovation and to the rescaling induced by globalization. A contribution to the process, still in progress, on the rules and principles according to which municipalities should join in functional, areas or networks, able to govern territories and promote conditions of greater sustainability in local development processes (1).