An Urban Equalisation Strategy for Managing the Transition to Climate Resilience in an Ordinary Italian City

Abstract

Climate change poses complex challenges that require simple and viable responses, particularly for those small and ordinary cities that are traditionally lacking in financial and human resources. To effectively address climate change responses, adaptation and mitigation strategies imply the understanding of solutions as well as the inclusion of different actors in the decision-making process. Responses to climate change not only depend on the knowledge of the impacts of extreme weather events but also on the inclusion of comprehensive approaches that should consider the availability of areas for spatialising different solutions, the cooperation of stakeholders at different levels, and the disposal of financial resources and institutional capacities. Such approaches face several difficulties and limitations for their real development and management, especially in ordinary cities. This is mainly due to a general lack of areas belonging to municipalities to be used as public spaces for developing new adaptation and mitigation actions and, therefore, to their related economic viability. The implementation would require the public acquisition of private plots, which is often economically unsustainable for local administrations and faces resistance from private landowners. This study proposes an urban equalisation approach that is grounded in the principle of targeting a balanced sharing of benefits and liabilities among those private actors involved in adaptation and mitigation programmes. The case study of Ragalna, a small Italian town, is investigated in the framework of the recent Local Spatial Plan that carried out a tailored transfer of development rights strategy for building a new green infrastructure aimed at pursuing a climate-resilient scenario that can be adopted by other ordinary cities.