Sustainability and Urban Dimension: Main Concerns about Territorial Planning and Management in European Union

As the principal point of this article we present main issues from economic theory and from regulation activity regarding the territorial management and organization at the urban scale. The aim is not to provide clear solutions, but is more to put in the light of the day how, in spite of the changes between periods in which territorial planning prevails and periods in which a market--based approach is dominant, the territorial spatial organization requests indeed a mixed use of both regulative and theoretical perspective. In fact, they do not necessarily have to provide conflicting recommendations: probably the issues that can positively influence the economic and social activities relevant at the level of the urban dimension are actually those that should belong to both of them. The dominance of one approach over the other might also give positive results in the short term, but in the medium and long period is not sustainable.