Focusing on metropolitan cities
by recognising their fundamental role in tackling
socio-economic, environmental and territorial challenges and by
introducing programmes and instruments managed at a metropolitan
level - that was the message from the seminar organized by the
Metropolitan Cities of Turin, Florence, the Politecnico
University of Turin, and the University of Florence, which
discussed the results of the Espon Metro project, from the Espon
study programme, which specializes in regional analyses.
A project which, according to Turin Mayor Stefano Lo Russo,
highlights "the importance of the metropolitan cities, a factor
of cohesion and development at an EU level and a systemic unit
of territorial reference to be seen also in light of future
European planning.
"In the metropolitan cities," he added, "we can develop the
required social, demographic, and industrial processes,
including the most cutting-edge, the most innovative".
Florence Mayor Dario Nardella echoed Lo Russo saying that
"in the metropolitan and European cities we see the heart of
the challenge of fighting climate change, of the energy and
digital transition, of the transformation of our territories via
the regeneration of whole parts of the major metropolitan
areas."
Nardella recalled that metropolitan cities, in Italy and Europe,
consume almost 80% of energy and produce almost 80% of carbon
dioxide, and so it is here that we must concentrate our
instruments and resources".
Giancarlo Cotella, a lecturer in urban planning at the
Politecnico di Torino, presented the results of the Espon Metro
project,which saw the participation of nine European
metropolitan areas and the same number of research institutes,
stressing how the metropolitan dimension presents in Europe
various levels of heterogeneousness, due to the territorial,
demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of the functional
urban areas, to the level of institutionalization of
metropolitan cooperation, as well as the models of governance
and spacial development tools.
The seminar was also an occasion to present the results of the
Espon project with particular regard to the two metropolitan
cities being studied, Florence and Turin.
As far as Turin was concerned, the study underscored the unequal
impact of EU cohesion policy instruments in the metropolitan
territory, according to the type of fund, governance of the
instrument and capacity of local actors to take part in the
programmes and benefit from the projects financed.
Similar critical issues emerged also in the case of Florence, in
which the distribution of cohesion funds was not uniform,
although they have positive repercussions in the construction of
projects of a metropolitan interest which are shared by various
institutional levels, also thanks to strategic metropolitan
plans.
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