Investigating the Health-Planning Nexus in Italy: A Survey on Local and Metropolitan Plans

This contribution investigates the health-planning nexus in Italy by looking at the contents of the local and metropolitan plans of three Italian cities, Bologna, Florence, and Turin. The objective is to analyze the contribution of planning to the transition towards healthier communities, through a survey oriented to map and analyze objectives and actions related to health and wellbeing. Findings show a rhetorical understanding of how plans tackle the issues related to health. Also, scarce attention over the functioning and organization of the healthcare system and the contribution of health services to achieve healthier communities emerges in planning policies. Nevertheless, the global pandemic has initiated a change in the approach, as a growing number of plans are starting to incorporate objectives and actions related to health,with a focus on the development of primary care and community health services. The chapter comprises four sections. After a brief introduction on the context and debate, Sect. 2 presents the methodology and the criteria chosen in the survey. Section 3 highlights a discussion of the data collected concerning the five criteria previously identified. The last Sect. 4 includes some concluding remarks.