Getting closer: imagining new forms of governance for a changing urban landscape

After decades of stalemate in terms of institutional innovation, the year 2012 has opened a new opportunity for reflection in the field of territorial governance in Italy. In order to face the challenges posed by the current economical crisis, the national government has in fact enforced the institution of forms of metropolitan government, those introduced by law in the 90’s but never implemented so far. This new binding perspective was part of a larger project of redesign of the role and boundaries of provincial institutions over the entire national territory. The general rationale under this governmental initiative being more related to the reduction of public expenditures, rather than to a strategic reform of territorial governance, the initiative has raised many critical comments and opposition at the local level, in particular on the side of provincial governments, opposing it for different reasons. Nevertheless, in a few month, a process of redefinition of political boundaries took place: although not yet implemented, for a series of political and institutional reasons, a number of different proposals of boundaries redesign has been issued, sometimes as conflictual outcomes of debates and negotiations at the local level. At the same time, main metropolitan areas, like Turin, Milan, Rome and others, have launched a debate aimed at producing in due time according to the national indications, the constitution of metropolitan governments. The paper aims at exploring these two different processes looking for elements of innovation: to what extent, despite, or because of the logic of public expenditure reduction, have they been producing new interesting work hypothesis to overcome the limits of current forms of government and introducing new governance forms taking into account the complexity of contemporary urban condition? Which new territorial geographies have been proposed and by whom? To what extent spatial planning and urban studies have contributed to this debate- directly and indirectly? The paper will first present general considerations on this process and then will in particular focus on the Lombardy context, and the urban region of Milan, in order to develop specific critical reflections on the significance of the current debat