Urban planning in Italian inland areas: some case studies in Campania Region

In Italy as elsewhere inland areas are recognized as territorial peripheries, affected by a strong demographic decline, mainly due to a lack of employment and accessibility to essential services. The Italian Strategy for Inner Areas follows a double track approach to reduce these peripheralization processes: it entails both the reorganisation of essential service provision and the promotion of development local projects focused on prioritized fields of intervention. Urban planning of inner municipalities may be recognised as playing a strategic role to achieve this goal, especially in the second approach. Supporting this thesis, the article reports the project experience of the municipal urban plan of some italian inner municipalities in Campania Region, and defines a general methodological and operational framework to be applied in the urban planning of these territories, in order to maximize the effectiveness of funding programs such as the mentioned strategy.