Innovation and 'resistance to change' in urban regeneration practices: A new area-based programme in southern Italy

Abstract

This paper aims at highlighting changes in urban regeneration practices in the Italian Mezzogiorno. It focuses on a specific area-based programme, Programma Integrato di Riqualificazione delle Periferie (PIRP, Peripheral Neighbourhood Rehabilitation Integrated Programme), targeting social housing neighbourhoods, promoted and funded by the Apulia Regional government in 2006. During the 1990s the European Union (EU) introduced new programmes targeting deprived areas. These programmes were familiar in some parts of Europe but innovative in Italy in terms of formal procedures, content and social processes. The Apulian PIRP was set up in the following years as an attempt to build a programme which was intended to be as innovative as the EU programmes. This paper assumes a bottom-up and local perspective to investigate whether changes in the modes of tackling the complex problems of deprived neighbourhoods have been due to the 'formal' changes in the urban policy instruments or to a broader `cultural' shift.