Perspectives, trends and opportunities in city management in Italy: What new challenges Me ahead?

摘要

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the evolution of the place management concept, approach and implementation in its first ten years of experimentation in Italy and to identify the new challenges that lie ahead. In recent years, the distinctive image which has always characterised Italian town centres has been gradually fading away, distorted by the erratic colonising of new in-town and out-of-town residential and commercial developments. What has happened at a global level — growth of suburban shopping centres, progressive diminution of traditional retail, downtown decline and the subsequent need to reverse it— is happening in Italy at a very fast pace. Since the late 1990s, efforts to manage the process of social and economic revitalisation of Italian town centres and urban business districts have been many and varied, reaching positive outcomes in the short term, but failing to produce lasting effects. Following a brief introduction, this paper explores the weaknesses and strengths of the Italian town centre and place management experiences, and identifies the new challenges to restore their identity and unique character that Italian town centres are now facing.