AN EXPERIENCE OF PARTICIPATION IN URBAN PLANNING.

The article focuses on the social participation in urban planning in Faenza, located in the region of Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy. Faenza is a small city with some 54,000 inhabitants and a notable historical tradition. After World War II, in Faenza as in many Italian cities the inhabitants of the oldest section, the historical center, who earned avenge or high incomes and wanted new housing left for the expanding suburbs. The situation of Italian historical centers recalls that of the oldest parts of American cities, the so-called core or downtown areas of inner cities. The starting point of the experience to be described in Faenza, while making plans for urban development, was the scope of the mandate that the municipal administration gave for a plan to revitalize the historical center. The planners were to take into account not only problems of the buildings such as various palaces of historical value that were empty, some near collapse, but also social decadence. What exactly the municipal administration meant by the goal of revitalization of the historical center was not made clear in the commission nor in subsequent discussions.