ABSTRACT
In Italy, though being under discussion since the 1990s, a profiled national policy for city-regions or metropolitan areas is a rather recent phenomenon. Despite the isolated approaches of city-regional planning and governance in Bologna, Turin and Milan, the problem of more effective coordination and strategic planning remained largely unsolved in most city-regions, for various reasons. In contrast to Germany and France, there is no comparable offer of institutional formats for inter-municipal cooperation that have been successfully tested (such as the EPCI in France or the Regionalverbände in Germany). In the wake of the financial crisis and the need to consolidate public budgets, the initiative was taken up again in 2009 with the ultimate goal to replace the provinces by Città Metropolitane. The law came into force on 1 January 2015 and by now 14 Città Metropolitane exist. It is, however, debatable whether this constitutes a breakthrough for the consolidation of fragmented local government structures. The chapter will present and discuss the course of the national reform process and give a detailed insight on what the reform has changed in two case studies (Florence and Bologna) against the dimensions suggested by the comparative framework.
