How can urban regeneration projects be conceived without the participation and financial, planning and ideas contribution of private entities? The question continually echoes in an era in which urban regeneration has become one of the fundamental development levers for Italian cities and for the whole country, but in the public debate, private participation is nowhere indicated as a priority.
The Minister of Infrastructure and Sustainable Mobility, Enrico Giovannini, has made an exception to this silence, who has indicated on some public occasions the private intervention as strategic in collaboration with the public one, but has also included in the reform text of the law on urban regeneration preferential lanes are being discussed in the Senate to evaluate private projects, even as an exception to planning.
The Pinqua
Confirmation of this attention to the role of private individuals now comes from a reading of the rankings of the Pinqua, the national integrated program for the quality of living, launched by Mims and co-financed by the NRP of which the Program has assumed the implementation times as binding. In the Program, urban building, infrastructural and social regeneration interventions and great attention to social housing.
With its 159 projects funded and a total dowry of 2.8 billion, it is the most ambitious national urban regeneration program currently in the field. As part of the overall program, the amount of funding indicated as “private” by the Ministry documents amounts to just under 700 million, in addition to funding from the NRP, the national program of the 2020 budget law (paragraph 437) and other funding publics deployed in the local area. These are the projects for which in recent days – in order to comply with the objective indicated by the NRP – the agreements between Mims and the Regions, provinces, municipalities and metropolitan cities have been signed. About sixty can count on private funds.
The pilot project of Brescia
If the pilot project in Brescia is added to the total amount of private funding, which asked for an extension of thirty days to submit the project to the approval of the city council, the total sum reaches 740 million, given that the Brescia project – redevelopment of the Tower Tintoretto in the San Polo district – boasts a share of private financing of 42.4 million, 50% of the total amount of the investment.