Strategic Planning for Contemporary Urban Regions

In 2005, the Provincial Administration of Milan and a group of researchers from the city's polytechnic worked together to develop a new 'Strategic Plan' for Milan's urban region. The results of this innovative strategic planning project have been presented in several national and international conferences and it has gained the attention of and praise from leading planning experts (Patsy Healey, Jean Hillier, Robin Hambleton, Klaus Kunzmann, Louis Albrechts among others). This book examines the Milan Plan in detail, explaining that it is based on two main premises: Firstly, the idea that cities and territories are currently experiencing such profound transformations which are putting great pressure on the traditional descriptive tools, so much so that planners have to engage in the production of new ones. And secondly, the plan proposes that these transformations are actually affecting the way in which we design urban policies and planning processes. Starting from this perspective, the research group created at a strategic plan, while at the same time, producing new descriptions of the Milan urban region and at renewing public policies and models of public action. In reconstructing the process, its premises and its results, the project offers insights into - and new directions for - planning theory more generally, while at the same time testing this powerful and innovative research hypothesis in an important European city empirical study. In detailing the results of this project, this book proposes a useful ground-breaking approach to planning for similar urban regions.