Polycentric development policies: a reflection on the Italian “National Strategy for Inner Areas”

The concept of polycentric development has attracted much attention of both scholars and policy-makers. In recent years, there has been growing acknowledgment of the relevance of the topic in geography and regional and urban studies. The debate has gained considerable momentum in 1999 due to the ESDP, which identified polycentrism as a key issue. From a spatial planning perspective, but also from an academic one, the more intriguing question is whether the polycentric model can offer new insights into how to trigger regional/local development, by investigating some themes which are directly related to it: the need to overcome the urban-rural dichotomy in policy and the best scale for governing inter-urban spaces. This paper, after briefly reviewing the international literature and highlighting the findings of the academic community and various organization positions and interventions on it, presents the rationale for an examination of the Italian “National Strategy for Inner Areas” (SNAI) according to the more widely accepted conceptual and practical categories. Starting from an analytical reading of the planning document, it aims at assessing how much of the knowledge produced so far is indeed embedded within it and how these issues are addressed by it, ultimately providing some hints of the hindrances and opportunities the implementation of such a strategy entails. As final remarks, it identifies key issues that need to be dealt with when reflecting on SNAI within the framework of the debate on polycentricity and which are likely to open up new, much intriguing research avenues.