The Metropolitan City of Florence: purpose, functions and NRRP
This video will explain how the Metropolitan City of Florence works and what are its main activities.
.
.
The Metropolitan City of Florence was established in 2014 by Law No. 56 with ten other Metropolitan Cities in the Regions with ordinary statute, such as Turin, Milan, Venice, Genoa, Bologna, Bari, Naples, Reggio Calabria and Rome, the capital. There are also four Metropolitan Cities located in the special statute regions such as Cagliari, Catania, Messina and Palermo. All in all, the Metropolitan Cities comprise 1.268 municipalities covering 46 million square kilometres and 21 million residents. As far as the Metropolitan City of Florence is concerned, the resident population in 2021 was almost 1 Million inhabitants for an area of of 3,514 square kilometres and 41 municipalities. As mentioned, the Metropolitan City was established on April 8, 2014 and started operating on January 1, 2015. It borders with the Metropolitan City of Bologna and the provinces of Prato and Arezzo with a population density of 288.49 inhabitants per square kilometre.
What are the many and diverse purposes and duties of the Metropolitan City of Florence? They range between data collection and processing, technical-administrative assistance for local authorities, the integrated management and promotion of services, infrastructures and communication networks, institutional relations, control of discriminatory phenomena, adoption and yearly update of the metropolitan strategic plan, school network planning and management, the coordination planning of mobility, roads, and environmental enhancement, and the promotion and coordination of socio-economic development and IT and digital systems.
Alongside the metropolitan city model, there are other European types of such authorities, (….) namely the Berlin, Bremen, Hamburg, Vienna, Madrid and Brussels model. They are true city-states, recognised as having special legal status and have duties, such as transport planning and organisation, duties which are performed jointly with the individual local administrations.
Else, there is also the London model, which is the only authority established by an Act of Parliament to perform duties related to infrastructural and territorial planning in the metropolitan area, while the French metropolitan cities model is planning oriented, in close connection with the municipalities and the area’s main economic, social and cultural stakeholders. Finally, the Barcelona model, where the metropolitan area is just a territorial reference framework for functional cooperation between local administrative players.
Mobility is a particularly relevant issue for the Metropolitan City of Florence. Such challenge (….) in terms of modal distribution of motorised traffic is as follows: 2.9 million car rides, 110,000 train rides, 126,000 tramway rides, 340,000 urban bus rides and 33,000 extra-urban bus rides. As to economic and tourist development, metropolitan cities are the driving force of economic development, competitiveness and attractiveness. More specifically, the Metropolitan City of Florence creates 37.10 BILLION euros, which account for 2.34% of the added value provided by all 14 Italian metropolitan cities nationwide. In the last pre-pandemic year, 2019, metropolitan cities hosted 31 million foreign visitors, i.e. 47% of the total foreign tourism in Italy as by data of the Italian National Statistics Institute.
As to logistic poles, the strategy of the Metropolitan City of Florence is to implement the intermodal exchange network in the area through strategic spots or junctions in the infrastructural network, namely a system of intermodal nodes, called hubs, classified as to the level and type of accessibility in the various areas. With regard to knowledge hubs, the Metropolitan City of Florence considers the networking of both public and private, Italian and foreign universities as well as research institutes as
The Metropolitan City of Florence works in cooperation with many other authorities and memoranda of understanding between metropolitan cities were signed over the years. Specifically, Bologna and Florence signed a memorandum of understanding mainly to promote the international role played by the two cities in a synergic manner. And again the European networks are essential in the construction of a political debate space to build the joint future of European cities, especially Eurocities and METREX. Thanks to the Association of Italian Municipalities’ continuous support, inter-metropolitan working groups were consolidated for resolving common problems, such as the projects linked to the recovery and resilience plan. Yet, the metropolitan city is not just responsible for organising supra-municipal services, but also for exercising the principle of subsidiarity.
www.cittametropolitana.fi.it
