Urban regeneration, why we need a law for cities

(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - In the beginning it was the 'Save Milan' law, but there are more than one administration grappling with derogations and loopholes when it comes to redesigning the urban fabric. Where the law does not intervene, in fact, judgments intervene. And where there are no suitable regulations, space is left for ambiguity. The Italian town planning law, on the other hand, dates back to 1942. Before the war and designed for a context of urban expansion in a country that was still predominantly agricultural. Today, almost 85 years later, we are an ageing country with a building stock that rather than expanding should often be reused and rethought for new needs. With the need to save land.

This is why, and not only from mayors, voices are multiplying calling for a law to regulate and define the concept of 'urban regeneration'. A theme that Miriam Allena, lecturer in administrative and environmental law and director of the degree course in Transformative Sustainability (LM TS) at Bocconi University, also raises: "The national legislator has limited itself to adopting single punctual norms relating to specific profiles of the reuse and recovery of existing buildings and, therefore, focused on a building scale, not an urban one," she says. "The concrete content of regeneration policies has thus been left, to a large extent, to regional legislation and municipal planning.

Now that the decree-law on the Piano Casa (House Plan) has been approved, a City Plan may be back on the table. Regulations in this sense have started their process several times, ending up on dead tracks, a law has been under consideration for months in the Environment Commission, and the need for a regulation now seems more than an option a necessity. "First of all, there is a lack of a unitary definition of urban regeneration and soil consumption; secondly, even where action has been taken, there has been a substantial reduction of urban regeneration to recovery and building redevelopment. Maybe even useful, but not enough,' Allena further explains. As if to say: a city is not just a collection of buildings.

Up to now, when action has been taken, it has only been through specific and precise regulations, regional laws or municipal resolutions. With the effect of fragmentation as well as, often, confusion. "Generally providing procedural simplifications and advantages such as: recognition of bonus building rights, exceptions to limits on building density, height and distance between buildings, exceptions to admissible uses, leaving in the shade objectives of social, economic and environmental regeneration in a broad sense," continues the Bocconi professor.

A chaos in which the rulings have put stakes: administrative judges, the Court of Cassation and even the Constitutional Court "have repeatedly reaffirmed that derogations from ordinary regulations and urban planning forecasts as an incentive for regeneration interventions must be carefully weighed".