The impact of metropolitan authorities and supra-local strategic spatial planning on land-use patterns: a comparative analysis between Barcelona and Milan metropolitan areas, 1950s-2010s

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In the past 70 years, dramatic demographic and morphological changes have greatly affected the traditional urban structure of the European territory. These demographic and morphological shifts are generally referred to as metropolitanisation processes, and have posed pressing institutional and political challenges to policy-makers. Across Europe, a typical (but gradual) response to these challenges since the 1950s has been the establishment of metropolitan authorities. Typically, area-wide, strategic spatial plans were issued to propose a comprehensive guideline for future development beyond and across local administrative boundaries (i.e. supra-local level).However, a key question remains about how and to what extent metropolitan authorities have been effective through these strategic spatial plans in steering local spatial policies for urban containment, in particular for the containment of urban sprawl. Urban sprawl, or suburbanisation, can be defined as "a poorly managed and poorly planned urban growth (...) characterised by an excessive increase in urban land uses, decreasing urban densities, and a spatially dispersed distribution of households and economic functions" (Siedentop and Fina 2012: 2765-2766).The argument of this research is that European metropolitan authorities have had a substantial impact on land containment policies over time. The main hypothesis is that, despite the strategic character of spatial plans as guidelines for supra-local spatial development, specific day-by-day spatial planning practices have been set in motion between metropolitan and local governance actors that enabled the effective implementation of supra-local strategic spatial plans. Investigating how land containment policies are applied in practice at the metropolitan level appears to be particularly meaningful nowadays because it can improve our understanding on how to support and direct efforts towards sustainable development at the supra-local scale.This study connects processes of metropolitan governance (i.e. the role of metropolitan authorities) with patterns of (suburban) land-use expansion. This research examines to what extent institutional factors, governance dynamics and spatial planning practices at the metropolitan scale can have (and have had) an (indirect and non-causal) impact on land-use patterns.Building on my previous research, this study examines the role of the metropolitan authorities of Barcelona (Spain) and Milan (Italy) in steering local spatial development towards urban sprawl containment. The urban regions of Barcelona and Milan were selected because they have similar institutional structures and spatial planning systems, but present divergent spatial development patterns.This research proposal specifically targets the second objective of the overall study (O2), and the work programme as well as the requested funding concerns this objective only. The first and third objective (O1 and O3) have already been carried out.