There will be time until the end of 2024 for the Municipalities and Unions of Municipalities ranked in the 2021 Urban Regeneration tender of the Emilia-Romagna Region to obtain the expected contributions. The Regional Council has extended the validity of the contribution requests presented and deemed eligible to 31 December this year, and has approved the conditions for the scrolling of the ranking. The amount identified to give a greater number of Administrations the possibility of obtaining contributions is an additional 10 and a half million euros from the 2021-2027 Development and Cohesion Fund (FSC), which will be available after the publication of the resolution CIPESS for FSC resource allocation. The interest that the tender aroused, with 177 proposals received and almost all of those already financed having been approved and the interventions started, demonstrates excellent planning capacity on the part of the local authorities. The Region has therefore decided to expand the number of Administrations that will be able to benefit from contributions for proposals already examined and deemed eligible.
“The positive path of the 2021 Urban Regeneration tender continues – states theCouncilor for Territorial Planning, Barbara Lori – and the resources that the Region makes available for zero land consumption territorial planning increase. A project that promotes regeneration interventions starting from the smaller, mountainous municipalities located in inland areas, with particular attention to the environmental quality of the proposals. The objective is to give these communities new opportunities to combat depopulation, new services and better conditions for growth and development, strengthening social networks, reducing the distance between center and periphery and enhancing territorial identities. We are very satisfied – concludes the councilor – with the great planning capacity of the Administrations that participated”.
There are 18 Municipalities and Unions of Municipalities potentially benefiting from the contributions. In order to access the contributions, the following conditions must be met: the explicit interest on the part of the proposing Administration in the implementation of the proposal presented, guaranteeing the local co-financing quota expected; the feasibility of the proposal with respect to the commitments proposed during the selection phase of the tender, with particular interest in respecting the reward conditions that allowed the assignment; the presence of the conditions for compliance with the deadlines for carrying out the works, which must start by 30 October 2025 and conclude by 31 December 2028.
The results of the tender to date
The call, aimed at Municipalities and Unions of Municipalities under 60 thousand inhabitants, provides for contributions to give new life to public spaces that have long been abandoned and no longer in use – such as former schools, old municipal offices, depots or warehouses -, with the aim to make them available to the community to host new services. In addition to establishing rewards for mountain municipalities and inland areas, for those with less than 5 thousand inhabitants and for those that have not yet received regional contributions for urban redevelopment and regeneration interventions, the tender assigned particular importance to the environmental quality of the project. The interventions, in addition to avoiding new land consumption, were aimed at maintaining high attention on their effective ability to generate new functions and host new activities, also through forms of participation and co-planning. Creating community spaces capable of transforming themselves into new opportunities to enhance the territory: libraries, meeting places for young people, centers for the elderly, multipurpose and sports areas, gardens, car parks, tourist and cultural facilities. So far, 80 urban regeneration interventions have been financed by the Emilia-Romagna Region with 47 million euros, capable of generating investments of over 75 million euros in the area. The smaller municipalities obtained 42% of the available resources, while 46% went to the mountain and inland area municipalities and unions.
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