Italian Urban Plans: Diversified Approaches and Methods for Assessing Their Quality

This article poses the difficult task of providing a brief overview of Italian urban planning, difficult to understand for foreign observers because each Region has different legislation and urban planning tools. The paper describes an original methodology that evaluates the quality of the approach differentiated as (1) ‘of the plan’ (reformist, participative, from the territory); (2) ‘in the plan’ (integrated strategic, sustainable); (3) ‘with the plan’ (conformative, methodological, recompositional, systemic-infrastructural); and (4) ‘beyond the plan’ (beyond governance methodologies). The paper also compares aspects of quality present in plans for large, medium and small Italian cities. The conclusions review factors of excellence that may be used in other international scenarios.