Outside-in: Co-production and the spatial planning systems in Italy and England

Abstract

This article concerns the growing interest in ‘co-production’ in spatial planning, focusing on its relationship with planning systems. The article refers to Italy and England – two institutional contexts with different planning systems – and concludes that co-production can operate outside or inside the planning system. Both models have pros and cons. However, the critical factor determining co-production regarding the planning system appears to be related to how land use rights are allocated. While prior allocation through prescriptive plans keeps co-production out of the system, only allocation as a final case-by-case decision allows co-production to be part of it.

The University and the Neighbourhood—Opportunities and Limits in Promoting Social Innovation: The Case of AuroraLAB in Turin (Italy)

“…As Tricarico et al [11] stated, "SI-based policies have been discussed as possible solutions to cope with the impositions related to the issue of proximity as a driving factor to recalibrate the spatial reorganization of services and to the management of social dynamics" (p. 2, emphasis added). We are thus witnessing a renaissance of "the local" [25], where the neighbourhood scale becomes the target of policy experimentations based on co-production with public administration [26][27][28]. It is at the neighbourhood scale that a strong interdependence emerges between the place-understood as a specific local context that expresses peculiar characteristics and needs-and the people, i.e., the subjects that inhabit that place and, in some cases, take action-together with other agents-to develop social innovation processes [29] at the local scale, where different forms of knowledge can encounter each other and synergise to solve context-specific issues.…”