The Effects of INSPIRE in Urban Planning of Small Towns

Urban planning is strictly related to environmental protection and planning and the knowledge of the areas involved is fundamental. Furthermore, an urban plan is subjected to Strategic Environmental Assessments, thus implying a deep integration of environmental concerns with planning ones. INPIRE could be the right instrument to share both the information that is needed and the results of the planning exercise. But, notwithstanding the big progresses, the real application is quite far from the ideal theory. The present paper will show the results of a practical application of the INSPIRE principles in the case of an urban plan (“Piano Urbanistico Comunale Generale”) for a small town in Italy, in the province of Rome. The area is quite limited (around 1300 hectares) and the population involved is really small (less than 1000 inhabitants) but the documents, graphs, maps that are requested by the competent authorities are the same that are requested for bigger towns and cities. Most of the data that are needed for this type of procedure should be available from public authorities at different level of government, in particular at national, Regional and sub-regional level. The experience has confirmed that, notwithstanding INSPIRE directive, a lot of work has still to be done, not only on existing data but also on the sharing capacity of public authorities and on metadata applications. After a brief analysis of the required data for this procedure according to EU and Italian laws, the possible sources will be analysed trying to put into evidence good practises and deficiencies. The purpose of the study is not to give marks to authorities but to try to give some suggestions that, in addition to INSPIRE rules, can improve the sharing system for practical applications. Several situations have been identified: - presence of data with relevant metadata and correct reference system (few) - presence of digital data without or without relevant metadata but different reference system, that can be: o available through web services o available through direct contact either for free or with charge (even for a public authorities ) o not available in digital format - other cases The efforts to put together these data are quite different, depending on the status of the data themselves, and the suggested improvements will be different. It is fundamental that the INSPIRE principles are spread not only at high governmental levels, but also at the local one.