ABSTRACT
During the last 10 to 15 years many places in the Italian Mezzogiorno were involved in a series of area-based initiatives promoted and/or funded by EU Structural Funds. These initiatives have been established across different kinds of target areas and have assumed different focuses. Among them are: initiatives tackling the concentration of social, economic and environmental problems in deprived urban areas; initiatives promoting new integrated and participative approaches to rural development; initiatives promoting economic development and employment in regions including one or more municipalities, etc. Despite their differences in both target areas and focuses, these initiatives present some common characteristics. In particular, most of them: (1) assume an integrated approach including social, economic and environmental actions; and (2) assume a bottom-up approach, being based on the establishment of a local partnership involving actors from the private, public and voluntary sectors.
