Municipalities have shown great interest for co-planning and in particular for planning agreements. Both small and big municipalities have understood the importance of working together on intermunicipal issues and of entering into agreements with the Province before drawing up new town-planning tools. At present many municipalities have signed planning agreements and many of them have already begun drawing up new plans according to the PTCP.

Planning agreements’ most successful themes concern the planning of productive areas, tourism-related development, infrastructures and environmental policies. Municipalities have become indeed more aware of environmental risks. This is basically why many plans contain the concept of “limit to transformation”. Such novelty might be regarded as a remarkable success if we consider that plans had been carried out and implemented without in-depth environmental research until 6-7 years ago, whereas planning activities are now based not only on territorial and geological aspects, but also on aspects related to vegetation, fauna and history of the territory.

Compared to the accomplishment of PTCPs, the first use of landscape indicators has caused a few difficulties, especially for smaller municipalities, whose lack of proper territorial information system hasn’t allowed to carry out enough detailed analysis.

Another difficult issue, as stressed by municipalities themselves, concerns the high costs of drawing up town-planning schemes. In order to overcome this economic issue the Province allocates incentives funds to small municipalities that decide to join together to draw up the plan. The combined action of planning development allows to cut down expenses. At present there are 4 associations, made up by 4 or 5 small municipalities with similar territorial features, that have joined together to draw up their plan.

Compared to the analysis carried out by the plan, an updated and detailed study on industrial areas enabled to show that out of 200 places no longer in use that had been counted in a census of the provincial area at the end of the 80s, only about twenty of them are now no longer working. There has evidently been a great recovery.

The most remarkable changes have occurred in fringe areas. Many industrial areas no longer in use have been turned, especially through urban recovery programs (prust), into areas meant for cinema industry.

Still unsolved is though the problem of fragmentation of ecologically complex and rich areas, where anthropic pressure and changes due to infrastructures and network (long-distance power lines, aerials) have deeply changed and damaged landscape. We have been able to stop the settlement growth in fringe areas, thanks also to the PTCP intervention. In fact the new plans opt for a development that is no longer spread along the main infrastructures, but concentrated mainly in small centres or villages with utilities.

A difficult issue to handle with - in settlement’s layout - is the great demand for houses in country areas that has further increased thanks to a regional law allowing dwelling extension. This parallel market of “former” country houses risks to jeopardize landscape integrity. Unfortunately the law concerning rural areas contained in the PTCP is not suitable to stop this sprawl. This phenomenon is one of the problems to be urgently tackled.

The general trend to search for quality living environment - as our provincial area offers – is getting more and more frequent. The territorial market of close regions, such as Tuscany and Latium, is now overstocked. Whoever wants to invest in farmhouses or agriculture looks for a market with similar characteristics and available shares, like the one of our province. Another phenomenon related to urban sprawl is that of second homes. It had stopped for a while, but it is starting again.

An “international” market exists as well. It is not a market of second houses, but of permanent residences for foreigners who have decided to move on the outskirts of Orvieto. In fact in some municipalities there has been a considerable population growth. A difficult issue that the PTCP has not been able to face properly is mobility. Therefore a plan update has become a necessity.

The public transport system is lacking in organization, rather than in quantity. A good balance between road and rail transport is needed. The plan update will have to take into consideration that inland transport system uses mainly private vehicles. The railway network in particular will have to be reorganized and strengthened.

Municipalities have focused their attention on environmental issues, especially on hydrogeological risks. The plan has been an important key for the river Tiber Basin Authorities in order to understand hydraulic and hydrogeological risks and environmental protection. The new municipal planning goal is environmental and territorial safety.

Municipalities have also carried out some interesting research on the subject of nature and vegetation, which have integrated and examined closely those studies already contained in the Territorial Plan.

The subject of archaelogical resources contained in the PTCP and proposed to municipalities has not been completely examined. Instead of carrying out analysis on settlements by gathering documentary inquiries, many municipalities have merely picked up the information contained in the PTCP without seeking the advice of archaelogists (this issue has been faced in detail only in the plan of Orvieto).

Municipalities have also failed to carry out perusals on the integration between urban mobility and town-planning policies.

The Biotechnical Engineering manual has certainly awoken interest, yet less than how it was expected. The idea of a Biotechnical Engineering manual arose as PTCP’s regulations prescribe the use of specific techniques only for interventions in areas with peculiar environmental and natural features and for strengthening works of water courses. The manual has been used and appreciated by specialists and associations. Other bodies to which the manual was addressed though, especially land reclamation consortiums, have not used these techniques in their projects yet. The province itself has now extended its authority (through regional laws) for the optimization of water courses. This will contribute to increase effective interventions in order to solve for good knotty problems, difficult to be solved with traditional techniques.

The interest for biotechnical engineering has lead to a new cultural approach and new job opportunities for both personnel and companies that decide to specialize in such field, especially in plant nursery.

We are now offering the opportunity to all public bodies’ officers to attend a course on biotechnical engineering. Other courses will be organized for private operators as well.

After approving the PTCP, about twenty per cent of the municipalities in our province drafted a new municipal plan. Many other municipalities, that is to say about 45%, are about to pass on to the province new town-planning tools. Among these is the plan of Terni.

Generally speaking, all municipalities have begun to draft a new plan. Some of them though are running into difficulties as they had been given only old plans that did not contain preliminary analysis and must now carry out basic research that is required to draft a proper plan. The municipal town-planning tools of the whole province should be completely renewed within the next five years.

We are pleased with the quality of the new plans, which are very different from the old ones. All municipalities have now town-planning schemes that have been studied in depth. The first landscape plans, which explain PTCP’s directions in detail, are currently being drafted at municipal level.

Intermunicipal plans are rather plans that have been worked out by an integrated group of people and preceeded by planning agreements. They are totally new as they set benchmarks such as development of production fields or of settlement phenomena that involve several fields, ecological network, etc.

Bilateral agreements between various municipalities (involving 4 or 5) have been signed as well. Such agreements determine preferential relations between municipalities with common and specific issues. The structural part of the plan develops the themes of the agreements and PTCP’s local development, while the operative part of the plan awakes only local interest. I believe that such new intermunicipal plans will provide a more flexible approach which is more likely to work well.

The province has a co-planning function in the plan’s draft and working out. This is a commitment for the province itself that has also the task of checking and testing the plan’s consistency through large-scale tools. Such check serves also as PTCP’s update. As we have said before, the province allocates funds to carry out the plan giving the priority to municipalities with less than 10.000 inhabitants that decide to join together.

We are planning to update the PTCP, although its basic principles stay the same. It will be a totally new phase in which town-planning department and sectorial planning will work together on environmental and transport matters.

A very important link - to solve and implement environmental issues – is the teamwork with Agenda 21, which had already begun in 2000 and had developed strong ideas that will be strengthened in the sustainability plan of the Province.

Through Agenda 21 it will be possible to combine the territorial plan with the sustainability plan of the Province and to try out concertation platforms, workshops, forums and communication.

All the province inhabitants have been handed out questionnaires that have highlighted the strong need of communication and participation through concertation processes to satisfy the most urgent territorial needs. Unfortunately not all Agenda 21s have been started, the province therefore must make up for a municipal-level management that is beyond its authority. We have signed the Aalborg Charter, we hope that this experience can help spot new environmental themes concerning mostly water cycle and energy. It is now proven that provincial plans are also environmental plans. Such thesis has been strengthened through the latest regional delegated acts: the province – ours in particular - has now extended its authority on several matters (water, soil protection, air, waste, mining activities).