Leading the resurgence of shrinking towns: Evidence from italian planning practices

This paper firstly presents an overview of causes, consequences, and coping strategies of urban shrinkage in Italy, indicating that most of Italian strategies are reaction strategies. Afterward, taking specific cases, the paper illustrates the Italian experiences on leading the resurgence of shrinking towns, and summarizes the experiences mainly focusing on industry cultivation, optimized reuse of abandoned spaces and infrastructure, regeneration of organization model, etc. To meet the needs of Spatial Planning and New Urbanization, the paper discusses Chinese shrinking towns’ current situation and associated problems presented in taking planning actions and then summarizes the insights of Italian experiences into four aspects: strengthening the recognition of shrinking towns and establishing the informatization platform; taking the county and town as a whole to lead the characteristic, elaborate and diversified development of industries; improving the quality of human settlement in the people-oriented perspective; establishing a collaborative alliance among various stakeholders to promote selforganization ability.