Impacts of institutional change on urban transport policy in Rome: an update.

Publication: German Policy Studies

Publication Date: 01-OCT-02

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COPYRIGHT 2002 Southern Public Administration Education Foundation, Inc.

Abstract

In the late 1990s, innovation in the institutional arrangements boosted a new collaborative transport planning approach in the city of Rome. The creation of an integrated planning agency (STA) helped the transition from the level of theoretical and ideologically driven planning, traditionally anchored to the high volatility of the political arena, to the level of practical implementation and administrative stability. Today, after some 5 years of operation, such experience is producing significant results--including the long-awaited adoption and implementation of the New Master Plan and the consequent novelty of land use development around public transport nodes--and is ready to step forward to comply with the recent legislation reforming the organisation of local public transport systems.

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The Context

Rome's metropolitan area, which includes the municipality itself plus 119 other small municipalities, has experienced in the last decade a significant suburban sprawl, with a growing share of population leaving the centre to live in the surrounding areas. The economic activities, predominately based on services, including transport, hotels, and public establishments, are generally concentrated within and around the historical centre, an area in which most government, leisure, and tourism activities take place.

This concentration of activities has resulted in an insufficiently developed radial transport system that has severely hampered the use of public transport. The metropolitan area of Rome has in fact shown, over the past three decades, a noticeable imbalance between the demand and the supply of mobility. In the last 35 years there has been a threefold leap in terms of kilometres travelled due to the increased length of trips and number of circulating vehicles (+ 650%). This growth has not been matched by a parallel development of the public transport system that has only recorded a 90% increase (in terms of kilometres travelled) during the same time period. Consequently, the public transport modal share, holding 56% of total motorised trips in 1964, has witnessed a dramatic decrease, and today is only accountable for 34% of motorised trips. Unfortunately it is the same fate for the walking mode, which has considerably declined following the reported rise of distances travelled.

This dominance of the private car is particularly difficult to manage given the urban fabric of Rome that was not designed to host the automobile. The roads are narrow, uneven, and do not form a grid pattern. Furthermore, the city lacks adequate ring roads so that even transiting across town often requires trips traversing the central areas. Not surprisingly, these conditions have resulted in high levels of congestion and pollution, particularly severe in a city with such a high concentration of artistic values and population. Such unsustainable environment is the result of decades, mostly the 1960s and 1970s, and partly the 1980s, of irrational urban growth that was caused by the combination of several elements:

* economic boom;

* population increase;

* lack of organic planning;

* influence of the automotive industry;

* scarce environmental concern;

* lack of political stability.

With specific reference to urban planning, this article examines the twofold changes that have reshaped Rome's land use trends during the 1990s:

1. the changing planning approach, which has successfully helped Rome complete the transition from dysfunctional practices to integrated and co-operative land use and transport planning;

2. the changing institutional setting, which is currently adding the last pieces to the puzzle of Rome's planning organisation.

The Changing Planning Approach

Urban planning in Rome has traditionally been based upon a clear separation between the work of the land use and transport department. This, in conjunction with the state of isolation from the wider provincial and regional context in which municipal planning was confined, has led to the erratic urban development sketched above. In this sense, Rome's last Master Plan (PRG--Piano Regolatore Generale, 1962) is often quoted as having been responsible for the present car-friendly environment, in that it laid down the city's urban planning for the next four decades.

The Plan envisaged land use developments for a projected population of 5 million. However, the actual results did not live up to the expectations, rendering the termination of the urban highway program necessary when only 20% of the planned highways had been completed (as opposed to the development of 98% of the planned residential areas). The result was a monocentric city in which disjointed concentrations of residential areas sprung around the main road corridors, leaving low density voids in between. Consequently, the city has been deprived of the structural benefits induced by the development of a compact urban form along the principal rail/metro routes and is still very much dependent on car use.

Such incongruent line of action was further thrown off balance by the low population growth, which, by the year 1997, had only reached 2.8 million (therefore, a territory developed for 5 million people is today inhabited by less then 3 million).

In the early 1990s, the present city government (in office since 1993 and currently serving its third straight term) decided to break the isolation and rigidity in which the planning process had fallen. In particular, the administration sought to achieve three major goals:

1. integrate the municipal planning with that of the other territorial entities;

2. narrow down the separation between the strategic phase and the implementation phase;

3. incorporate mobility and environmental issues into the urban re-qualification plan.

In particular, the ultimate goal was to achieve the so-called "co-planning" together with the Province and the Region giving more power to the already existing Conference for Metropolitan Planning. By the intentions of the municipality, such an arrangement would guarantee a better appraisal of plan-dimensions (i.e. determination of real settlement capacities) and would allow a better definition of urban standards (including possible service concessions to private operators).

The starting point of such integrated land use and transport strategy can be traced back to the vision of the new Rome government, which was well expressed by Walter Tocci, then Vice-Major of the town and councillor with specific responsibility for mobility policy. This strategy was based on one crucial statement: the "iron cure", the rail program sponsored in those years, was not only seen as a transport development programme, but also as way to frame the future land...

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