Italy and European spatial policies: polycentrism, urban networks and local innovation practices1

This article presents the changes that are emerging in the Italian urban and territorial policies mainly through the discussion of the relationship between the principles of polycentricity and networking affirmed by the European Spatial Development Perspective (ESDP) and, in general, by the European official documents on spatial planning, and the role of polycentrism and networking in Italian praxis. The article is organized as follow. The first section presents the general framework of the concept of polycentrism and its relevance for the European Union (EU) policies. The second, third and fourth sections briefly describe Italian territorial organization and spatial policies, and illustrate some operational examples of the application of the network model. The fifth section presents the empirical and political relevance of the concepts of network and polycentrism. Finally, in the conclusion, the use of the network proposed by the European official documents on spatial planning and the difference between different meanings of this concept are discussed (from field of interurban relations to local mechanisms of collective action).