Urban regeneration. The case study of PORU – Senigallia (Ancona, Italy)

Few Italian authors have investigated the term “regeneration” as it is dealt with in the international literature. The current interpretation of “Urban Regeneration”, in Italy, seems to be a re-interpretation of the old term “requalification” rather than a change of the paradigm for spatial policies. Nowadays, “Urban Regeneration” is perceived as the traditional practice of “requalification” which had been abused by planners and architects referring to an urban design practice for brownfield re-use. Such approach, leads to increased confusion and misleading interpretation between the authentic way of face with deep innovation for spatial policies, especially during a credit crunch period which request radical innovations in land use planning. The Italian case suffers from a lack of appreciation of the original interpretation of the term “Urban Regeneration”, which is (particularly in the UK) deeply rooted in urban policies than in urban design practices. The paper argues how the contemporary Italian interpretation of “Urban Regeneration” is poor and ambiguous in comparison with the authentic one: it will be presented how it is mainly focused on the final goal of urban transformation project which remains, as usual, an urban design project for land transformation. In contrast to this, the paper try to argue how regeneration practices being strictly dependent on Public Private Partnership (PPP) for managing and steering projects of transformation, and presents a case study (Senigallia, AN) which is going to define new paths to achieve a pioneering regeneration process for the existent city. Even not concluded, the Operative Program of Urban Requalification” (Programma Operativo di Riqualificazione Urbana - PORU) generates innovations on process (it is adaptable to administrative capacity of negotiate with real-estate operators) which is going to steer urban transformation policies and define new paths to achieve urban transformation (it uses innovative procedures for define rules of transformation).