The impact of metropolitan authorities and supra-local strategic spatial planning on land-use patterns: a comparative analysis between Barcelona and Milan metropolitan areas, 1950s-2010s
Empirical Social Research
Political Science
Final Report Abstract
In the past 70 years, metropolitanisation processes have greatly affected and changed the traditional urban structure of the European territory. A characterising aspect of has been the phenomenon of “urban sprawl”, which can be defined as an inefficient, low density, scattered territorial development. Across Europe, a typical response to the challenges posed by metropolitanisation and suburbanisation processes has been the establishment of metropolitan authorities. Metropolitan authorities were set up either through institutional consolidation (metropolitan reform tradition) or institutional fragmentation (public choice perspective) and, since the 1990s, the concept of “new regionalism” has emerged emphasising the importance of cooperative arrangements among networks of policy-relevant actors for effective metropolitan governance. Furthermore, the institutional itinerary of individual metropolitan authorities has changed over time: they have been established, abolished, re-institutionalised through different governance arrangements, and their competences have been redistributed, expanded or limited. There is hence a high heterogeneity among European experiences of metropolitan governance. Therefore, a key question is how and to what extent efforts of metropolitan coordination in Europe have been contextually effective in steering local spatial policies for a more sustainable land use, in particular for containing urban sprawl. The fieldwork involved the performance of 22 in-depth interviews in both Barcelona (Spain) and Milan (Italy), as well as the land-use analysis of imperviousness data (soil sealing) from the European Copernicus database and the longitudinal (although descriptive) analysis of land-use data from local datasets in Barcelona and Milan for a period of 60 years (1950s-2010s). Findings show that the control and steering capacity of supra-local governance actors varies, over time and contexts, and is composed of specific spatial planning practices. The regional and provincial authorities in Barcelona and Milan do not only control the compliance of local land-use plans to spatial planning regulations, but also steer planned local urban growth through negotiations and political work, and supra-local coordination. The analysis showed that the use of both quantitative (control) and qualitative (steering) criteria when assessing local land-use plans, and the presence of binding area-wide (metropolitan) plans, are associated with more compact and less suburban spatial patterns. The analysis also showed that the identified three classes of suburban areas, i.e. 1) 16- 44% soil sealing: low imperviousness or high suburbanisation; 2) 45-64% soil sealing: medium imperviousness or medium suburbanisation; 3) 65-79% soil sealing: high imperviousness or low suburbanisation, can be meaningfully used both as appropriate thresholds to differentiate among types of suburban areas, and also for comparative research. These three suburban classes are hence promising for further comparative research and for expanding the sample size. Furthermore, the empirical fieldwork showed that the routine institutional work performed by actors at the selected metropolitan authorities has been similar: the reduction of local growth expectations, the approval of supra-local plans and the spatial coordination of transport and green infrastructures appear to be key domains characterising the practices of supra-local spatial planning at the metropolitan level in the selected case studies. The main policy recommendation that can be derived from the findings of this study is that, although they do not have direct planning competences on land-use management and allocation, supra-local governance actors, in particular metropolitan authorities, do have a role on local land-use change. Specifically, it is the “soft” institutional work performed by supralocal governance actors that can foster a more sustainable and efficient use of land at the metropolitan (area-wide) territorial level. The findings of this study are a steppingstone for building a common framework for future comparative analyses to examine and evaluate the different experiences of metropolitan authorities in Europe and beyond.
Publications
- (2021) Supra-local spatial planning practices for limiting urban sprawl in the Barcelona and Milan urban regions. Land Use Policy, Special Issue on Urban Sprawl
Pagliarin, S.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105816)
