URBAN HERITAGE, TERRITORIAL POLICIES AND THE CULTURAL DISTRICT APPROACH IN ITALY

In recent years, for different reasons, “new” planning tools for intervention in the city and the territory were introduced in Italy. The aim is to improve the economic impact of the value chain of cultural activities and favouring different forms of public-private partnerships. In these new territorial policies, more powers are attributed to local authorities; they assume a central role in the processes of development of cultural heritage. It is difficult to synthesize all the new planning instruments because they are numerous and many of them have never had practical application. The paper will give a summary of the most applied and will show their strengths (new “participatory institutes”, integration and flexibility) and their weaknesses (the difficult to find a “compromise solution” between the different stakeholders)