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The Social Housing: Outlining new housing policy for Italy, is to propose more complex generational and social mix of residents in the quarter that was earlier designed for utilities and social uniform levels, and are to consider the city logically no longer centred on the development and expansion of the fragmented territory but rather a new concept of urbanity. In the consolidated city and the surrounding areas, the requalification and densification of the existing areas also becomes an opportunity for the conversion efficiency of a public property which is now obsolete. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The building lease is a new tool available to the government to finance public 'cold' infrastructures which allows to spread the investment over several years. Some major projects have recently been funded with this solution which can be used for both new works and for interventions on the existing buildings. The use of the building lease on existing assets (such as renovations or restorations), however, is still very rare, because of the need to «sale and lease back» the building concerned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most of the Italian cities have been in crisis through the last decades, not being able anymore to guarantee the needs and expectations of their inhabitants, due to the lack of fundamental services, mobility, places of aggregation and attraction. The housing growth since Second World War, answering almost only to the needs of speculation and revaluation of landed revenue, produced anonymous and degraded suburbs, contributing to cancel a fundamental part of our communities' history and culture. The crisis of the cities has clashed with the architectural one. Through sustainable regeneration, identified by the Italian architects as the greatest opportunity for revitalizing the cities and develop the country, we need to sustain interventions based on high architectural quality, besides innovative energetic, environmental and social requalification standards. It is now as never fundamental to extend the city effect from the centre to the far end suburbs, upgrading the public element, integrating the services and proposing new polarities able to interact in a synergic and propaedeutic way with the city centre. Within these settings, involving public agencies and resources with private companies and capitals, the new conversion, development and alienation of the public real estate (valued more than 400 billions €), represent a unique chance to redefine and regenerate the cities, apart from being an extraordinary opportunity to drop the debt and rationalize the local government expenses. To provide powerful infrastructures, aimed cultural policies, sustainable and environmental developments plans, are the biggest challenges to make our cities the most important investment on our future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses aspects of the enhancement and alienation of public property assets in Italy. It explains the proposal of the National Association of Construction Companies (ANCE) for the redevelopment of decayed urban fabric or urban renewal through the creation of a task force that could work alongside and help councils. It also cites the level of planning in the initiative SITdA with the theme of energy saving and social eco-housing.

In the present economic context, property development is the most realistic opportunity to give new life to Italy's rich historic-artistic heritage. This article describes the planning, economic and social implications of the procedures for authorising development, which involve public administrations in an important decisionmaking process prior to the more typical phases of the actual project. The impossibility of divesting these properties has stimulated legislation that in turn initiates complex operations, which have effects not only for the property, but also in the regional context, involving the urban planning, construction, social and economic sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Milan's urban growth was heavily influenced by the structure of the rail network for transporting goods and people. The great railway yards that used to service the industrial system have now lost their raison d'être after the relocation of industrial plants and the tertiary sector dynamics took over the city. These have become large abandoned brownfields or soon to be abandoned, totaling over 1,300,000 square meters, located mainly along the urban belt surrounding the city walls, often in densely built environments. Since 2005 these areas were the subject of several agreements between the City of Milan, State Railways SpA (FS) and the Lombardy Region, to examine various scenarios and the feasibility of their conversion, as confirmed in the draft of the new Territorial Government Plan (PGT), which identifies the Areas of Urban Transformation. Scenarios and assumptions that, in the current revision of the PGT, must approach the strategic role of this rich heritage from an environmental regeneration and valorization perspective extended to urban and metropolitan scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]