Rome updates its Master Plan: new rules and incentives to boost urban regeneration

The new regulations also introduce a 10 per cent social housing quota for changes of use. In addition to this measure, there is the so-called ‘development contribution’, ‘an extraordinary charge levied on the investor and redistributed to the city’, which may also be allocated to active housing policies, such as the purchase of flats and rental incentives. ‘In the most complex outlying areas, where building replacement alone may not be economically viable and where it is necessary to redesign larger sections of the urban fabric, integrating them with public works, it will instead be possible to implement plans offering incentives of up to 35 per cent.’

Under the new NTAs, the system therefore combines a direct incentive of 20 or 25 per cent with the possibility of reaching 35 per cent through an implementation plan. The aim is to balance the greater complexity of the town planning instrument with an incentive scheme capable of supporting investment in the most challenging areas. An approach to town planning that is more performance-based than prescriptive, but governed by criteria and limits explicitly set out in the regulations themselves.

It should also be noted that, in order to respond more quickly to stakeholders and reduce administrative risk, the offices have been strengthened by the recruitment of around sixty new staff members, including architects, engineers, surveyors, technicians and civil servants. The organisation has also been reorganised into two departments: one dedicated to planning and urban development programmes, and the other to implementation and operational responses.

Among the measures that could also lead to a policy of greater transparency and dialogue with the market is the establishment of a single register of building rights, designed to tackle the long-standing problem of offsets and ‘building rights that float around the city and which, when they settle, often cause problems’. ‘The register helps the authorities to monitor the situation and can assist the market in understanding development potential, whilst also encouraging new operators to enter the market,’ explains the councillor.

For buildings that are dilapidated, abandoned, unsafe or at risk of collapse, the option is introduced to demolish them without the obligation to rebuild immediately, whilst retaining the building rights for the site. This moves beyond the current approach, which treats demolition and reconstruction as a single project, thereby encouraging at least the removal of dilapidated elements in cases where immediate reconstruction is not economically viable. Changes in land use are also being made more flexible. Furthermore, within the framework of building credit management, these changes may also serve as a means of reabsorbing some of the building credits still in circulation. The proposed mechanism would, for example, allow a property to be converted from office use to residential use without increasing its floor area, whilst requiring the developer to relinquish a portion of the building rights held in their portfolio. This approach makes it possible to absorb outstanding building credits, encourage the regeneration of the existing urban fabric and limit the consumption of new land.

According to Councillor Veloccia, the first applications of the NTA could involve the outlying districts of the capital and former industrial sites that are derelict, run-down and sometimes squatted in – from the former Penicillin factory in the Ponte Mammolo district right through to Tor Cervara. These are areas where the new regulations could facilitate regeneration projects combining new uses, residential development and social housing quotas, thereby helping to improve safety and the quality of the urban environment. The former Ama Montagnola site, according to Veloccia, represents a pioneering project, carried out using regional legislation in the absence of an update to the municipal technical regulations. ‘If we’d had the new regulations, we could have acted independently within the Master Plan.’ Under the new framework, the councillor concludes, similar projects can be managed directly through the city’s planning tools.