Colleferro, start of plan to attract data centres

A city officially founded in 1935, but with settlements linked since the end of the 19th century to the processing of beet for sugar production. The Colleferro theatre of productions that range from chemicals to heavy industry to today's aerospace, looks ahead and bets on innovation. In this municipality to the south of Rome, an ambitious game is being played, kicked off by the publication of a public notice that has all the flavour of a call to the future: the municipality intends to collect expressions of interest for the construction of data centres, 4.0 production plants, companies linked to the space economy, biotech poles and advanced health services. Production areas, but smart ones. No longer warehouses, but technology-intensive hubs. Not a project dropped from above, but an open call: to the owners of unused areas, to entrepreneurs, to innovators. To think together about a new growth model. It is urban planning, of course. But also industrial policy. It is urban regeneration, but with an eye on the infrastructures that underpin technological development.

"It is a territorial bet, linked to a vision. The initiative,' explained mayor Pierluigi Sanna, who is also deputy mayor of the Metropolitan City of Rome, 'wants to leverage an awareness of the changing times and how to deploy it in an area that, given its aerospace vocation, can stand as a candidate to be the emblem of a high-tech development model. Present at the presentation of the project the day before yesterday were Marco Gabrielli, Councillor for Productive Activities, and Umberto Zeppa, President of the Urban and Territorial Planning Commission, together with Massimo Sarmi, President of Asstel, who spoke of data centres as an 'essential component' of the national telecommunications infrastructure, with a market that is expanding rapidly, but this growth 'must be accompanied by structural measures in the field of energy'.

The development of a data centre hub in Colleferro - Space City 2022 and Regional City of Culture 2018 - is the atout for a development that is at least complementary, if not an alternative, to the existing area on the outskirts of Milan. As for the technical details of the notice, the invitation is not only addressed to owners of vacant or degraded or even abandoned areas. Simple design or operational proposals will also be considered. And the selection of the proposals has been assigned to the City Council, which will make use of the two council commissions. All in 90 days.