Plans outside the system. Ad hoc instruments for designing and managing plurimunicipal urban areas

Abstract

After half a century of intense processes of urbanization, the correlation between municipalities and cities shows an explicit conceptual, formal and functional contradiction. It is no coincidence that countless concepts and neologisms such as urban area, city-region or urban-region emerge in the recent specialized literature for explaining the new urban patterns. However, in practice, these concepts do not fit well with any of the conventional levels of planning systems or with historical and administrative jurisdictions. Facing the mismatch between theory and territorial dynamics, a new generation of plans tries to address the challenges and opportunities that occur simultaneously at multiple scales, particularly between local and regional levels. By comparing three intermediate scale plans, this paper aims to explore the innovation and specificity of recent tools for managing plurimunicipal urban areas. We argue that the implementation of intermediate scale plans Í€“ outside the corset of planning systems Í€“ is an exceptional opportunity for enhancing governance and overcome the historical fragmentation between urban and regional planning.