European Planning Studies Vol. 19, No.

4, April 2011

Public –Private Partnership: A Delusion

for Urban Regeneration? Evidence from
Italy

GUIDO CODECASA & DAVIDE PONZINI

Department of Planning and Architecture, Politecnico di Milano, Milano, Italy

(Received February 2009; accepted February 2010)

ABSTRACT Public–private partnership (PPP) is currently sought by scholars and policy-makers as

a tool for overcoming the financial crisis of the State and low performance in public administration.
Also, it is deemed as an opportunity to bring added value to projects and their contents in order to
meet new, emerging social demands. Despite the growing attention paid to PPPs, international
literature has been questioning their actual effectiveness and viability. PPPs suffer indeed from a
lack of strategy-making and dynamism in public sector organizations: public action geared
towards private business cooperation requires advanced accounting, management and steering
skills that cannot be easily developed. Such issues match with the latest developments in the field
of urban regeneration and represent a major stake for local governments. On the basis of
empirical evidence from Italian urban regeneration projects, the paper highlights an actual
paradox for urban policies. Even when favourable conditions for project management are met in
the public sector, PPPs seem either unable to deliver innovative solutions or secure an actual,
long-term engagement of private and public resources.

1. Public Policies at the Crossroad of State and Market

The relationship between government activities and the market has been a major issue at
stake for philosophy, economics and policy studies. However, these long-standing
traditions have mainly been disputing the alternate roles and functions of these two see-
mingly opposite domains, ignoring a number of cases of overlapping and intersection
(Kettle, 1993; Link, 2006). Only recently, this viewpoint has undergone substantial
revision. In particular, a number of contributors stressed how public intervention is
framed “within” market societies (Lindblom, 1988; Williamson, 1996, 1999): in order
to achieve objectives of public interest, governments have to affect or even effectively
bring out market-like arrangements (Lindblom, 2001). To some extent, it has also been

Correspondence Address: Guido Codecasa, Department of Planning and Architecture, Politecnico di Milano, Via
Bonardi, 3, 20133, Milano, Italy. Email: guido.codecasa@polimi.it

ISSN 0965-4313 Print/ISSN 1469-5944 Online/11/040647–21 # 2011 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/09654313.2011.548471
648 G. Codecasa and D. Ponzini

questioned whether an actual divide may exist between government and business organ-
izations at an operational level (Alexander, 2001) since, at times, private actors happen
to hold objectives which do not differ significantly from those of public administrations
(LaFrance & Lehman, 2005).
In this regard, the bulk of literature on policy and public administration studies has been
stressing how governmental programmes essentially operate within sets and nets of
public, private and non-profit organizations (Sharpf, 1978; Kickert et al., 1997; Klijn &
Koppenjan, 2005). In this context, public – private partnership (PPP) and privatization
are catchwords that best capture the current sprawl of governing arrangements devised
to achieve budget control and public expenditure reduction by means of a responsibility
transfer to non-governmental organizations, notably in the fields of transport investments
and service delivery (Savas, 1987, 2000, 2005; Yarrow & Iasinski, 1996; Anderson & Hill,
1996), to a large extent in North America and Europe (Salamon, 1989, 2002; Vallaincourt
Roseneau, 2000).
The functional role of this strand of arrangements still remains undetermined and only
occasionally addressed by urban studies and planning research. Authors in these fields
mostly line up with the dominant approach in policy studies and limit themselves to
acknowledging the rise of new contractual schemes and procedures in which local
governments, private business (notably real estate), landowners and representatives to
local communities get involved (Bailey et al., 1996; Hastings, 1996; Pierre, 1998). The
term PPP may be referred to all those public initiatives where private organizations are
engaged (or share commitment), to some extent, in the design, the production or the
operation of utilities, services and assets. This definition, however, all-encompassing,
hints to a variety of situations that somehow affect the process of city development,
but, to say the least, it is unable to portray their distinctive characteristics.
For this reason, this paper aims at addressing the uncertainties in both defining and
accounting PPPs as a field of meaningful experiences for the planning debate. With this
purpose, we will first try to bridge an already existing body of literature and adapt its con-
ceptual lenses to the field of urban development projects, seen as typical displays of the
interplay between local governments and private sector organizations. Secondly, we
will try and test some normative views on selected case studies in Italy—a context
where the PPP topic is subjected by local governments to diverse attempts of sense-
making and experimentations. Both a literature review and the survey will be utilized to
question some basic assumptions as well as the challenges the PPP label is sought to
entail for planners.

2. PPPs and City Development: Between Rhetoric and Uncertain Practice

PPPs are currently subjected to an intense political debate and often charged with alternate
meanings (Linder, 1999). A quick investigation on press conferences and online reports
may show, in fact, how often discussing the involvement of private sector in governmental
affairs turns into speculating (and inflating) a realm of possibilities still unexplored. This
trend certainly does not help determine the actual significance of PPPs for urban policies,
but at least, it offers a first clue: public – private cooperation “occurs” already in different
instances—that have not yet been mapped comprehensively.
In order to build up some basic understanding, it is, thus, a good start to try and show-
case the general phenomenon and its current highlights, rather than indulge in broad
 Public – Private Partnership 649

conceptualizations. In this regard, Table 1 provides a sample and helps render a few
representative sets of situations where public– private cooperation is bound to the
process of city development: the context of operations can be a large real estate redevelop-
ment project (Bult-Spiering & Dewulf, 2006) as well as the formation of a strategic spatial
planning agenda, or the setting of an exploratory (and not necessarily binding) agreement
to develop joint projects in broadly defined perimeters. Each situation has its own
distinctive area of scope, its drives and the output public – private cooperation is supposed
to bring out. As Table 2 reports, PPPs are also promoted under the flag of different policy
agendas: housing, land improvement, transportation, environment, technological inno-
vation applied to service delivery—each featuring unique combinations of actors.
Tables 1 and 2 summarize early attempts at mapping the experiments of PPP. On the
one hand, they provide a way to interpret the occurrence of cooperation in urban plan-
ning-related fields and its most typical remits. On the other hand, such a variety can
result confusing as it challenges the PPP vocabulary that is usually displayed in policy
guidelines and public finance handbooks: at first glance one would wonder what PPPs
are exactly meant to deliver and question the actual existence of common traits or
purposes.

Table 1. A classification of experiments of PPP derived from an extensive survey on UK

experiments in the mid-1990s
Type Mobilization Area of coverage Range of partners Remit

Development Local Single site or Private developer, Joint development to

small area, e.g. local association, mutual advantage
town centre local authority
Development Local Neighbourhood Community based Community-based
trust with local regeneration
authorities and
other
representatives
Joint Locally, but Clearly defined Public, private, Preparation of
agreement may be in area for sometimes non- formal/informal
response to regeneration profit strategy,
national policy projects implementation often
through third parties
Promotional Local, e.g. by District- or city- Private sector led Place marketing,
the Chamber of wide or sponsored by a promotion of
Commerce development economic growth and
agency investment
Agency National, based Urban or sub- Public sector Terms of reference
on legislative regional sponsored with from sponsoring
powers private sector agency
appointees
Strategic Regional Sub-regional All sectors Determining broad
county local metropolitan strategy for growth
and development and
accessing EU funds

Source: Adapted from Bailey et al. (1996).

650 G. Codecasa and D. Ponzini

Table 2. The state of PPP initiatives in Europe concerning urban policies

Share in total
number of
Field projects Characteristics Involved actors

Urban Very high Mostly local projects in city Core: local governments,
development centres. In the 1980s mainly private developers and/or
in larger cities, later also in financers, housing authorities
other medium-sized and and associations
smaller cities Peripheral: civil society. For
strategic and political
purposes, projects are also
supported by the Central
Government grants
Transportation High Mostly large-scale projects Core: government
organizations (central,
regional and local), transport
agencies
Peripheral: environmental
groups
Environmental Growing, but Arrangements for Governments, not-for-profit
Green Projects tending towards environmental protection organizations
contracting out and revitalization
Technology/ Growing, but Projects for technological Private companies
knowledge tending towards innovation and sharing (contractors), knowledge
expertise knowledge institutes, consultants and
networks governments

Source: Adapted and integrated from Klijn and Teisman (2000).

Leaving aside the many facets of public – private cooperation, it is possible to notice
two aspects of general interest which can be used as anchor points for furthering our
discussion. First, PPPs seem mainly to signal the “rise of new tools” for government
(Salamon, 2002; Ponzini, 2008), that is, the discovery of alternate ways for local govern-
ments to take advantage of a third party either in the setting of their strategic agendas or the
performance of particular tasks (Pierre, 1998). Secondly, the term PPP can be referred to
any initiative, entailing the “pooling” of complementary resources held by several organ-
izations, within a regulatory framework, setting shares of risks and responsibilities among
the tiers concerned (Klijn et al., 2006).
In both respects, a problem of strategic choice for local governments can be exposed
(Friend, 2006). Opening up to the private sector represents, in fact, an option for public
administrations, which has reportedly found its main drives only in two alternate, and see-
mingly juxtaposed, discourses (Teisman & Klijn, 2000). On the one hand, PPPs refer to
new sources for financing the delivery of public utilities and the chance of loosening
the grip on public budgets. Otherwise, PPPs—however expensive—are expected to gen-
erate innovative solutions to the emerging issues of contemporary society, solutions that
might be achieved in no other ordinary way.
Exactly by delivering on these two promises, partnership formation and operation have
become frequent chapters in the agendas of central, regional and local governments. But
 Public – Private Partnership 651

aside from the broad recognition of the issue at the institutional level, the interest partner-
ships draw seems to depend more on the expectations for a too sophisticated concept for
policy-making, rather than on an accurate rationale. Although surveys of PPP projects
have been credited by the academic field (Plummer & Heymans, 2002) and at the insti-
tutional level (see for example: European Commission, 2003), the field of action
appears to be widely unaccounted for (Osborne, 2000). In part, this lack of information
finds practical explanations: research in this field deals with unique restraints to the
access to critical data, for involved actors do not readily make it public, and written
records do not cover the entire urban policy-making process (Sagalyn, 2007). However,
research in this direction has become highly demanded in the face of the consequences
of this lack of knowledge. Civil servants and elected officers often step into long nego-
tiations without considering the technical and financial aspects that are needed to set
out an agreement with business-oriented organizations (Stainback, 2000), eventually
being unable to counteract a private actor’s drive towards short-term benefits and its
disregard for long-term and side effects (Hula, 1988; Finger et al., 2005). It follows that
policy-makers’ current bias for public– private cooperation cannot be deemed in principle
a recipe suited for every situation: cooperation is indeed subjected to several risks. But
how should partnerships be crafted in order to avoid such risks? The answer to this
question still remains open and is contended by many.

3. Making Partnerships Work in Urban Regeneration: Building a Normative View

The very fact that PPPs actually occur as displays of a social and political exchange
(DiGaetano & Strom, 2003) and that there are no established means to assess their conven-
ience does constitute an issue of capital importance. This applies, in particular, to most
instances of urban regeneration, where the interplay between public and private organiz-
ations is not new and widely acknowledged by planners (Alexander, 1996). The function-
ing of public– private cooperation and the stakes it raises for urban regeneration represent
then a focus of high interest for planning studies, which still lack a consistent framework
for analysis. As we have seen, there is not much awareness of the conditions for the take
off and functioning of PPPs. The topic, however, has emerged as a primary problem in a
number of research agendas. Linking them to the issues of urban regeneration seems here
to be a necessary move, though a particularly demanding one: it requires, in fact, the
search for references that currently enjoy little or no recognition in planning studies,
but that may hold important clues nonetheless.
In particular, John Friend was the forerunner to the analysis of the inter-corporate (that
is, inter-organizational) dimension in the management of urban projects and its challenges
for local governments (Friend et al., 1974). Following his approach, a partnership process
in urban regeneration can be seen as a composite and yet changing pattern of transactions
closely bound to the strategies of a local government and the other parties involved.
Friend’s approach had been long overlooked, only to surface later in public administration
studies (Kickert et al., 1997). It is exactly in this research field that some advances can be
traced and reviewed. Despite competing approaches to the analysis of PPP projects have
been proposed over the last years (ranging from juridical analysis and deal structuring, to
finance regulation), the inter-organizational approach applied to decision-making has
given origin to a branch of European surveys that has gained widespread attention,
especially for providing a comparative outlook to PPPs, and matching interpretative
652 G. Codecasa and D. Ponzini

with assessment purposes (Pagonis & Thornley, 2000; Hodge & Greve, 2007; Sagalyn,
2007). Even if most of these contributions must be searched for mainly in public manage-
ment and administration reviews, their empirical evidence is mainly drawn from infra-
structure and large-scale urban projects, and thus features a high relevance for planning
research (Edelenblos & Teisman, 2008).
According to this first season of comparative studies in the European context, PPP
experiences can be tentatively classified into three main instances (Koppenjan, 2005).
In the first one, projects happen to start from a difficult phase of consultations and they
eventually end up in public investments without private participation. In the second, a
public actor envisions an ambitious project entailing the commitment of private resources,
however, once private parties are allowed in, negotiations reach an impasse until the pro-
ject’s scope and aims are sized down. In the third one, urban projects are defined incremen-
tally through careful contact management: private and public organizations draw nearer
and nearer to a common framework of operations with better chances to bring out novel
solutions for transport infrastructure and real estate development.
Of these three groups, however, the projects of the third type are by far the less frequent.
In the light of similar results, some scholars have assumed extreme and unfavourable pos-
itions with regard to PPP initiatives (Teisman & Klijn 2002; Wettenhall, 2003; Angerer &
Hammerschmid, 2005) by stressing their rare success and the hardships they endure to
achieve desired results. PPPs may indeed feature extremely long time spans and rising
costs (Nelson, 2001), or even give room to opportunistic behaviours (Coulson, 2005).
On the basis of these criticisms, these (and several other) authors have pointed out the need
to further investigate the requirements for a sound management of PPPs. The debate is still
underway and divided, but it is already possible to notice four emerging areas of focus:

1. The need for local governments to “frame projects” in longer-term perspectives and
agendas.
2. The need to secure a locus for the “function of collective steering” and goal setting,
especially inside public administrations, for financing, regulating and designing
projects (Berg et al., 1997). For instance, the formation of interface task units inside
public administrations, if provided with a political mandate, could bring reliability to
deal setting and contract operation (Noble & Jones, 2006).
3. The involvement of private sector organizations calls for new methods of “process
management”—a deliberate and disciplined effort at governing networks of organiz-
ations and updating their composition (Agranoff & McGuire, 2003; Klijn & Teisman,
2000, 2003; Klijn & Koppenjan, 2005). Success may, in fact, rely on a better awareness
and control of the phasing of contact formation and deal setting (Osborne & Murray,
2000; Stainback, 2000; Van Ham & Koppenjan, 2001; Koppenjan, 2005).
4. “Trust” relations can also be seen as a key to the endurance of joint efforts in project
design and operation. The will to cooperate may vary, in fact, on the mutual consider-
ation among organizations: central State, local governments and real estate investors
have manifested distinctive outlooks and inclinations towards cooperation (Klijn
et al., 2005), and a private business entrusts its public sector partners depending on
the actual transparency and continuity of the negotiation process (Stainback, 2000).

As a matter of fact, much emphasis is put on public organizations, seen as the main parties
responsible for the flaws and oversights of public–private cooperation. The fact that private
 Public – Private Partnership 653

parties may have no adequate means or know-how to deal with complex projects or highly
specialized fields of negotiation (Sagalyn, 1997; Boxmeer & Beckhoven, 2005) is considered
instead a secondary issue, or marginally explored (McGreal et al., 2000; Nijkamp et al.,
2002). The inability of successfully setting negotiations finds its main explanation in the
multi-headed character of government organizations (Klijn & Koppenjan, 2000). Public
organizations alternate, in fact, multiple or even conflicting orientations in a short time
frame. Also, due to ever-changing political commitment, public managers are forced to
keep their agendas as broad as possible and forgo the setting of clear terms for action
(Perry & Rainey, 1988), so that it is hard to make understood what the public interest is.
It comes as no surprise then if most authors are used to linking the fortune of PPPs to a
major change in public administration and the overcoming of this main dysfunction.
Besides, it is up to the public sector to reveal new chances for cooperation at its own
discretion and gear up for the challenges these choices entail. According to these contri-
butions, PPPs essentially rely on the performance of newly shaped public responsibilities,
and when it comes to the actual recommendations, public strategy-making is viewed as the
only key to triggering or exploiting the presence of the private sector in the design and
operation of urban projects.
In a way, the different instances of PPPs can be regarded as products and displays of
administrative discretion. Assuming this viewpoint, questioning the conditions which
affect the functioning of PPPs invites a comparison of alternate, strategic approaches
devised to engage the private sector. In those administrative contexts, where no major
dysfunctions are registered, the way PPPs are shaped can be, in fact, observed essentially
as the result of the technical choices—seen as the defining “attributes” of PPP forms—
performed by public managers. So, which instances of PPP can be considered “fair”
and “effective” exercises of administrative discretion?
Italy does not represent a landmark in pioneering PPP practices, but one of its distinctive
features can make it particularly suitable for addressing such a question. Italian municipa-
lities hold, in fact, a long tradition in freely tailoring urban policies, their contents and their
procedures. Beyond the extreme fragmentation of policy discourses, a selection of Italian
cases can show how even in similar institutional contexts a narrowly set topic—like
private involvement in urban redevelopment projects—can receive many different treat-
ments. A comparison of public strategies aiming at private involvement, unbiased by insti-
tutional constraints and rooted in favourable administrative contexts would prove to be
extremely useful to test and reconsider the role of PPPs in urban regeneration and its sig-
nificance for planners. However, before moving on with case analysis, a brief introduction
to the Italian institutional background and its current debate is necessary.

4. Mapping the Italian Debate: Raising Concerns for Private Involvement

The growing concern towards PPP in Italy is essentially drawn from individual experi-
ments carried out by committed local governments. Especially over the last 15 years,
local governments in Italy have been testing distinctive approaches in the management
of urban regeneration by devising original combinations of old, new and self-made
policy tools, in order to address their own special needs (Palermo, 2006; Palermo &
Ponzini, 2010). Basically, this growing repertoire is made up of individual responses by
public managers and policy makers that have sought to address three unprecedented
trends (Ombuen et al., 2000; Urbani, 2000): the struggle with the central State which
654 G. Codecasa and D. Ponzini

has been reducing financial transfers and simultaneously entitling local governments with
further competencies; a general uneasiness of local politics with comprehensive and stat-
utory planning; the rise of new opportunities for real estate development in abandoned
industrial sites, public estates and blighted neighbourhoods.
A key role in this process of change has been played by Italian municipalities, which are
formally appointed with the bulk of responsibilities regarding urban planning and land-use
regulation. Faced with these recent challenges, larger municipalities have resolved to put a
new emphasis towards “urban regeneration” as an action model based on the assembly of
project portfolios (Dente et al., 1990; Curti, 1997) and the control over the allocation of
social value caused by planning decisions and real estate investments (MIT, 2002). In
practice, this orientation translated into a new set of specialization fields that municipali-
ties only recently have started to delve into. In this context, the management of public –
private relations has finally surged as a technical issue. Public– private negotiation, a
rather common practice in urban growth management, has indeed rarely been perceived
a key activity to improving the quality of projects, their social impact (Mazza, 1997) or
the balance sheet for the public sector (Urbani, 2007).
The gist of the growing concern for partnership formation is relatively simple: prices in
real estate development are used to disguise the spill over effects due to nearby public uti-
lities, services and transport infrastructures (Micelli, 2004a). Local governments should
mind then how the production of the so-called public city (an embodiment of community
assets, landmarks and symbols) can affect the value of the privately built “city” and its
marketable components (Micelli, 2004b; Curti, 2006). In exchange for favourable plan-
ning decisions, real estate investors should be then asked to contribute to the production
of the public city, so that urban projects may work as single inputs to the fulfilment of
broader public objectives.
Despite some divisions among the Italian scholars (Gallia, 2004; Palermo, 2005), the
rationale of public –private cooperation is usually bound to financial and legal aspects.
In particular, PPP has been highlighted in the frame of a limited set of statutory planning
tools, the so-called integrated programmes (Micelli, 2004a; Pasqui, 2005) which oversha-
dowed the Italian planning debate for over a decade. An integrated programme is a bundle
of financial plans, building permits, project briefings and accessory agreements, crafted by
municipalities and their planning departments. Under certain conditions, these pro-
grammes are submitted by municipalities and local stakeholders in order to receive
grants issued by State Ministries or regional governments. In most cases these programmes
have also become the main focus of a covenant with real estate investors, or other State
organizations—an expedient to split the costs for new public facilities and secure either
governmental or private resources for large development schemes (Avarello & Ricci,
2000). Interestingly, this pledge of government grants induced several municipalities to
test joint planning and project accounting procedures (Savoldi, 2004). However,
nothing yet has been said about the forms of public– private arrangements that emerged
in the process.

5. Experiments in Italy: Investigating Alternate Forms of PPP in Urban

Regeneration
Given the present state of art, a consistent selection of case studies is extremely hard to
perform. We are only able to pick a sample of PPP projects that exerted a pull on the
 Public – Private Partnership 655

operators during the main conferences on the subject (Urban Promo, 2005, 2006, 2007).
These cases distance themselves from the most diffused routines of public – private nego-
tiation in Italy, where a private proposal for redevelopment is subjected to an assessment,
and eventually awarded by local governments with development rights in exchange for
minor revisions to the project layout. Instead, the cases that interest us constitute an
action model shift: the individual attempts by a few Italian municipalities (and their
most dynamic sectors) at rethinking the management of urban regeneration by testing
new formats of private sector involvement. Following below, the snapshots of five
ongoing processes (updated to 2008) showcase five action models, suggesting their funda-
mental differences.

1. City of Milan. The conversion of the railway depot areas in Milan has been the subject
of a long-lasting dispute between the Municipality of Milan (and its planning depart-
ment) and the asset manager company (RFI) of the National Railways Group (FS)
which alone represents one of the main landowners in Milan. The FS, a former
public entity, underwent a process of privatization, and it currently acts as an industrial
concern with branches in real estate investments and appraisal. In 2006, high-profile
contacts between municipality councilmen and CEOs of RFI and the FS group were
established. In the following months, technical meetings were undertaken in order to
define an ensemble of site perimeters and unlock key properties of the FS for redeve-
lopment purposes. A joint process of planning and design started, and produced a draft
action programme. The leadership of the City Council promoted the signing of a con-
tract framework as the first step in the formation of a package deal with RFI. The
package features, in particular, a master plan devised as a comprehensive framework
for separate development projects (each following tailor-made procedures) and an
agreed work schedule for both parties. In turn, RFI swapped its properties concerned
(about 2 million sqm) to a special-purpose vehicle called Sistemi Urbani, while the
Municipality of Milan managed to obtain financial support from the Lombardy
Region for transport-oriented investments in the selected sites.
2. City of Genoa. The Erzelli hill stands as a keystone in the regeneration strategy of the
Municipality of Genoa, especially for its potential role in the city’s economics and the
industrial take off of the western side (the Ponente). The Erzelli hill is now the target area
of a mixed real estate project, bound to the creation of a high-tech industrial district (the
Technology Village), attached university facilities, applied research institutes and
housing. The project’s responsibility has been progressively shifting from public to
private hands over a 5-year period (2000– 2005). In the beginning, a task force of the
Municipality drew the first development hypotheses and set a preliminary land-use regu-
lation framework in conjunction with the Province of Genoa. Then a development
agency (owned by local governments, local banks and the Chamber of Commerce)
explored the viability of possible solutions and investors. Finally after a series of
exploratory meetings, a consortium of high-tech industry firms adopted the outline of
the project and the location as an outlet for their own growth strategies. A special-
purpose vehicle (Genova High Tech) was thus formed: along with the Municipality,
it promoted a development scheme in search of further industrial partners and proceeded
with the purchase of the Erzelli property. After the land purchase agreement (39 million
Euros), in 2006, Genova High Tech acted as a host to new real estate investors, and
moved on to the definition of the development rights with the planning unit of the
656 G. Codecasa and D. Ponzini

Municipality. The latter worked as a reliant with public research institutes (willing to
settle in Erzelli and buy part of the designed facilities) and upper tier local governments,
sharing responsibilities in land-use regulation for that particular site.
3. City of Trento. The closure of the Michelin plants marked a breakdown in the heavy
industry of the city in 1999. The former Michelin estates represent the largest dismissed
industrial site in Trento and the closest to the city historical centre. Given its unique size
and its many open options for redevelopment, the area was considered both a future
opportunity and a potential threat by local politics. The Mayor of Trento thus tried
to secure the development site to a trusted operator: the City Council issued some
broad guidelines for the area, and through the mobilization of banking institutes and
local consortia, the formation of a new private corporation was finally achieved (Inizia-
tive Urbane). Iniziative Urbane subsequently bought the area and started to work on a
project layout, meeting both the financial requests of its shareholders and the approval
by the Municipality (its strategic planning unit and a set of departments). This even-
tually led to a progressive definition of a mixed residential project with the location
of a new park, a museum and university facilities. However, the 7-year-long nego-
tiation challenged the solidness of the shareholders’ group: the delay in the beginning
of the work resulted in enduring budget losses and a number of shareholders dropping
the joint venture. The company eventually found a new carrier, the Castello SGM,
which was, in 2009, in the process of selecting a general contractor. Meanwhile, the
Municipality sought the financial support of the Trento Province in order to either
buy or maintain part of the facilities to be delivered by the developer.
4. City of Parma. The Municipality of Parma identified four key regeneration sites—each
centred upon the location of a public amenity or a public facility, and providing space
for mixed residential and commercial real estate projects. In order to provide active gui-
dance to each development process, in 2004, the Municipality of Parma proceeded with
the formation of special-purpose vehicles, namely, STUs (an acronym which stands for
urban regeneration corporation), under the direct control of its planning department and
resource department. The action model sought by the Municipality of Parma is
two-fold: on the one hand, STUs perform the core tasks of land assembly, project
investment and operation within a given action perimeter. On the other hand, the
Municipality provides back-up by updating land-use regulation and acts as a broker
for governmental aid. Above all, the redevelopment of the railway station area
represented the most complex project in Parma and required the combined effort of
two distinct STU corporations. The Pasubio STU (a joint venture among three
private landowners and the Municipality) promotes a development scheme for
private housing and a large park—revolving around the assembly of 16 lots and the
dispute for the transfer of the existing manufacturing activities. The Stazione STU
works instead as a host of public funds on behalf of the Municipality, as it carries on
a public investment (consisting in the landscaping of public spaces and the improve-
ment of the old station) on private land. In order to do so, the STU has taken the
needed land on lease, and defined a complex procurement scheme for the new
improvements—through the inclusion of staff from qualified private consultants. The
Stazione STU was also created to avoid budgetary constraints: municipalities are not
allowed to make investments on the basis of projected cash flows, and would be
asked instead to prove the availability of funds covering the entire operation, from
its start to its end.
 Public – Private Partnership 657

5. City of Ravenna. The urban core of Ravenna is connected to the seaport through an arti-
ficial canal: the Darsena. Its surroundings are regarded as the cornerstone for the econ-
omic conversion of the whole city and the site for housing expansion. Since 1995, the
“City Darsena”, has represented the flagship in the long-term strategy of the Municipal-
ity of Ravenna, embodied in the City Master Plan (PRG), and the Municipality has
committed itself to the redevelopment of the area. The Darsena stands apart from
other initiatives in Ravenna for its unique blend of industrial conversion objectives,
residential expansion and public space landscaping. However, the Municipality did
not seek an “exception to the planning rules” for a given action perimeter. The planning
department of Ravenna, through preliminary talks with about 50 land owners, crafted a
consistent development framework (Program for Urban Regeneration, PRU) for the
Darsena, further defining the guidelines in the PRG. These agreements also served
as a consensual basis to test a mechanism of land-use rights transfer—sought as an
incentive to draw real estate developers from the periphery of the city to the Darsena
site (Micelli, 2004a). The Municipality of Ravenna has been targeting the City
Darsena with a series of joint planning procedures (entailing the participation of
private parties, further local authorities and upper tier governments) with the goal of
earning financial aid from central and regional governments. The Municipality was
awarded with enough governmental grants to sustain an ambitious programme of
public infrastructures and used it as leverage for private real estate investments
within the newly established regulatory framework.

These cases give an idea about the great deal of discretion that local governments use in
defining the staging, the rules and the scope of their engagement with the private sector.
Still, the information we gathered above may be arranged and organized more effectively:
in a way, the extreme features of these five cases can be better analysed with respect to
their “strategic framework” and their “relational framework” (for an extensive review,
see: Gualini & Majoor, 2007; Gualini, 2008). Reference to “framing” springs from the
hypothesis that urban development projects and their outcomes are affected by a wider
decision field with given sources of authority and embedded systems of interests. More
precisely, projects mirror an existing combination of perceptions, beliefs and strategies
“in use” (Schön & Rein, 1994). Also, the pattern of relations that is formed after a
project is affected by an already existing set of rules, decision structures and institutions
(Klijn & Koppenjan, 2005). The concept of frame is, thus, two-fold, as it upholds both a
symbolic-cognitive value and an organizational-procedural dimension. The first aspect
hints at the fact that policy-making, planning, policy design and project management
convey ideas, visions and purposes which ultimately affect the actors’ preferences and
behaviours. In other words, the concept indicates the fact that a project revolves around
a precarious balance of interests and preferences held up by public and private organiz-
ations. The review of such purposes, along with documents and official statements,
allows us to define what a project is (namely and implicitly) meant for: in this case, we
can speak of a strategic framework.
The second aspect of framing points to the fact that decision-making, design and project
management contribute to shaping policy arenas, the setting of responsibilities and forms
of interaction—among and within organizations. In this case, the concept of framing
indicates the fact that projects are developed into (and consist of) a field of relations; in
this sense, we can speak of relational framework.
658 G. Codecasa and D. Ponzini

As far as our study is concerned, the concepts of strategic framework and relational
framework can be used to better understand the unique backgrounds of a project and its
significance for local governments. The former hints about the stakes a project rises, its
drivers, its contents and its connection to the local government agenda: it describes
which policy problem the initiative is meant to deal with. The latter refers to the organiz-
ational arrangements and the composite set of agreements that ultimately scope the
responsibilities and the allegiances of the parties involved; ultimately, it refers to how a
project is meant to operate. In this regard, Table 3 showcases these dimensions and
allows us to see at a glance five alternate forms of PPP.
The sheer diversity which emerges from this first, tentative comparison raises one major
concern. If each action model can be regarded as the embodiment of an approach to public
strategy-making, one may question whether these PPP forms were equally able to induce
similar advantages to local governments. This links back to the closing question of the
third paragraph and the argument of much public administration literature. Accordingly,
private sector involvement is deemed as good since it is able to either bring about cost
reduction or enrich the content of projects. An appraisal of cases then should use these
two points as leading criteria; however, even if we do not look at their actual outcomes,
a closer inspection of the PPP forms in Table 3 allows us to make a few significant
points on this matter.
The first striking aspect refers to the contrasting drives of PPPs. Municipalities seem, in
fact, caught between two fires: the urge to make sure enough resources are secured for a
regeneration initiative, and the need to endeavour the design for a development scheme—
either consistent with a stated public agenda or bringing a favourable payoff to the local
community. The critical remarks stressed by the literature about the requirements for a
sound public management of PPPs can come in handy at this point and better display
this ambiguity. After a number of interviews with key decision-makers, it was possible,
in fact, to create a checklist (Table 4) showing the extent to which public management
sought to address these aspects. In these respects, Table 4 provides an intuitive, though
approximate, representation of how local governments have been prioritizing either
project contents or the formation of stable relational frameworks.
We can notice that several municipalities give priority to consolidating a strong rela-
tional framework, deferring the definition of project contents and goals to later steps of
negotiation (as in Milan, Genoa and Trento). In these cases, public managers regard the
chance of opening up a certain site to any development scheme as a valuable option by
itself. In other words, for these action models, it is not a matter of what an initiative is
more suitable for, but whether there are enough resources to start with and, to trigger a
development process, regardless of its results. So, in exchange for prior warranties
about the engagement of third parties’ resources, municipalities decide to temporarily
hold their claims on what the project should deliver to the community and grant a
certain key site a special status. PPP contents are thus shaped outside (or in the absence
of) any consistent strategic framework.
In our view, the lack of this very feature makes a PPP a fundamentally “unaccountable”
inter-organizational process, involving no liabilities for external costs—its objectives
being randomly defined by individual (or political) pressures. This represents a major
issue for urban projects: the risk of unaccountability, in fact, virtually invalidates both
the pledge of bringing either added value to projects or public cost reduction.
 Public – Private Partnership 659

Table 3. PPP forms at glance—strategic and relational frameworks in five Italian case studies
Strategic framework (community Relational framework
stakes, project contents (organizational arrangements and
Case administrative and political goals) inter-organizational agreements)

Milan, recovery of the Resolution of a long-standing Package deal: two-tier negotiation.

depot areas of the dispute between a major landlord
National Railway Group and the local government for
unlocking key urban areas
Genova: Technology Finding a location for industries
Village, Erzelli Hill and services in the emerging
economic sectors of the city’s
economy (research institutes,
districts for high tech)
Trento—former Securing a large dismissed
Michelin plants industrial site to a consistent
development scheme for the local
community. Asking the private for
a high-profile proposal
Parma—station area, and Finding alternate techniques for
Pasubio financing public assets: real estate
projects as compensation for the
financing of an asset of public
concern and public procurement
Ravenna—City Darsena Implementing a long-term public
Project strategy: financing the take-off
and regeneration of an industrial
area
Workgroups are appointed along
the way. The existing offices
provide the infrastructure for the
negotiation. Projects and new land-
use rights are set out through
progressive goal-setting, project-
scoping and design
“Progressive switch” of project
management “away from the
public”: (1) special planning unit
of the municipality; (2)
development agency owned by
private and public sectors; (3)
committed private fundraiser; (4)
joint venture with real estate
investors. Public facilities
delivered on requests to ready-
made public buyers.
Public steering for the formation of
a new private entity—a “trusted
investor for local politics”.
Negotiation between municipality
and the newly built private entity.
Private to submit further facilities
on demand
Combination of special-purpose
vehicles (STUs) born as either
public–private joint ventures or
public entities for land assembly
and financing purposes. Also, the
municipality supports the work of
the STUs by providing planning
permissions and updating its
statutory planning framework
Project within a comprehensive
public plan. Public –private
agreements for land-use rights
transfers and development
investment programme definition.
An influential planning task unit

When the opposite happens (as in Parma), private parties are divested of any responsi-
bility in the design of creative solutions for the local community, which remains an exclu-
sive task for the Municipality. Rather, private parties are asked to provide the means for
the delivery of ordinary items requested by the public sector, and simply fill their slots in
660 G. Codecasa and D. Ponzini

Table 4. Public strategies for private involvement—a checklist

PPPs prioritizing project contents PPPs prioritizing relational framework

Project contents A place for a Project developed

framed in a long- public steering Presence of process over trust-based
range view? function? management? relations?
p
Milano Only in early
p phases p
Genova Only in early
phasesp p
Trento p p p Only in early phases
Parma p p p p
Ravenna

the frame of wider procedures. Even cost reduction is not necessarily a goal here: Parma
shows, for instance, how an accountable process is essentially vowed to elude fixed terms
of public budgeting.
An analysis of PPP forms allows us to point out some structural limits affecting the
majority of strategic approaches to private inclusion and filter out those instances of
PPP that substantially hold no promises for the achievement of cost reduction and
content innovation. Of the five cases discussed, only the case of Ravenna seems to
stand up these criticisms. Are we in front of a comparatively suitable action model? In
order to answer this question, we are required to shift our level of analysis and focus on
the current progress of this initiative.

6. When Partnerships Do Not Even Take Off: Focus On The “City Darsena”
Project
The Municipality of Ravenna has been committed to only one action framework for the
regeneration of the “City Darsena” whose start was the preliminary meetings with 50
land owners and the project outline—the PRU passed in 1995 by the City Council.
Since its early conception, the “City Darsena” has featured an ambitious mix of private
and public housing, industrial site renovation and improvements in public land
(Figure 1) for an area of 136 ha, in a time frame of 30 years.
On the basis of overall cost estimates of 265 million Euros, the Municipality envisioned
a 68.5 million Euros public investment as leverage for private regeneration initiatives. In
order to gather this sum, an appointed taskforce of the municipality managed to collect
financial aid from the Central Government and the Emilia Romagna Regional Govern-
ment, with several successes: in 1998, the PRU programme was submitted to a call for pro-
posals by Ministry for Public Works, and granted 8.26 million Euros. An updated outline
of the same project was later rewarded by the Regional Government with additional finan-
cing, and similarly in 2000 by the Ministry of Public Works with another competitive grant
(PRUSST) for local development initiatives, and again with the so-called Porti e Stazioni
pilot programme. All these governmental grants were to be delivered on the condition that
the proposals were submitted after joint planning procedures. For this reason, the Munici-
pality scheduled diffuse consultations with the land owners in the area and signed a
number of bilateral agreements with them (in terms of statements of interest).
 Public – Private Partnership
661
Figure 1. Project outline (PRU) of the “City Darsena”—highlighted are the measures supported through public investments
Source: Comune di Ravenna, adapted and translated by the authors.
662 G. Codecasa and D. Ponzini

Thanks to reiterated governmental aid, the Municipality successfully managed to

deliver all the assets envisioned in the project outline, respecting all schedules and dead-
lines. However, despite this progress, the Darsena Project has registered no significant
contribution from the private sector. The interventions involving the private property
owners and the agencies owning key assets (the National Railway Company and the
Port Authority) still linger in a preliminary design stage. As a matter of fact, private
sector organizations have limited their contribution to early consultation, stalling redeve-
lopment for a decade.
Only recently, real estate operators have revived their interest in the redevelopment of
the City Darsena as the main business opportunity in the region (Savorani, 2005). This
stimulated a significant changeover of property owners from manufacturing groups, essen-
tially unconcerned about the options open to regeneration to real estate developers. The
new comers who bought key properties in the Darsena area meant to give a new momen-
tum to the initiative by gathering in a consortium: the Consorzio Nuova Darsena (Urban
Promo, 2004). The consortium, however, did not live up to the hype; despite repeated
attempts at establishing a channel with the Municipality to negotiate a new layout for
the area, the consortium reportedly encountered the opposition of the City Council. As
a response, the Municipality created a public development agency along with the
Chamber of Commerce and the Ravenna Port Authority. Currently, the two new entities
contend the entitlement over the design of the operation, but both of them lack the consen-
sus and financial weight to guarantee the take off of the operation.
As a matter of fact, after 13 years since its conception, the City Darsena remains essen-
tially an all-public investment, assembled by a dynamic local government, without a func-
tioning arrangement with the private actors. This evidence comes in part as unexpected
and asks us to further detail our judgement.

7. Dead Ends, Open Questions

The steps performed in the last two paragraphs essentially represent the enactment of a
mixed scanning approach (Etzioni, 1967) which combines an analysis of PPP forms and
the review of a project’s progress. In our view, this method provides a valuable tool in
assessing the relevance of PPPs as a strategic option for the local government. Our early
evidence, however, seems to have led us to a dead end: regardless their action models,
municipalities seem, in fact unable to ensure either the design of innovative solutions
(Milan, Genoa, Trento, Parma) or the take off (Ravenna) of urban regeneration,
failing to deliver both the main promises of PPP. This paradox finds its explanation
in a still unresolved challenge: how to afford accountability for urban regeneration
within an inter-organizational environment. As we have seen, most local governments
still regard this aspect in principle as secondary (Milan, Genoa and Trento), but more
importantly, the drive towards better accountability comes at odds with the need to
secure a private actor’s long-term commitment to a project (as shown in Parma and
Ravenna).
This gap between goals and action cannot be attributed with certainty to an unfavour-
able environment for public decision-makers. All the projects observed have been devel-
oped, in fact, in the frame of a long-lasting and balanced relationship between the elected
officers and the administrative staff involved in the operations. One may question then
how much a private counterparts’ aims are overlapping the public ones and how far a
 Public – Private Partnership 663

detailed action plan can work against or in favour of public – private cooperation.
Ravenna’s case clearly shows how easily even a consistent approach to strategy-making
and deal-setting leaves room for shifting involvements, which delay or even threaten
the delivery of the operation agreed upon. In this regard, existing research shows its
limits. On the one hand, it tells us that the public sector organizations should govern
such behaviours, but on the other, research has not thoroughly explained yet whether or
not it is always possible to find in the private sector goals and aims that may overlap or
match with the public ones. In other words, it should be asked to what extent private
sector organizations are capable of significant contributions in urban policy-making.
Perhaps, it is time to reflect on the “private sector’s invalidating features”: even when
public administrations engage in a long-term programme (such as in Ravenna), the
other actors could be unable to participate or follow. The difficulties of mobilizing
private organizations may be in part explained by the hardships in land assembly, or to
the fact that private operators may not necessarily be concerned about real estate
development.
In a way, a reconsideration of the innovative character and implications of PPPs in
urban regeneration is needed. One could argue, in fact, that public objectives of urban
regeneration should be resized in accordance with the “profile”, “interests” and
“history” of the “currently” available public and private organizations. On one extreme,
when the balance of skills and resources favours public administrations, PPPs may trans-
late into advanced forms of concession and procurement. On the opposite end, a private
business could intervene to stand for a weak and unresolved local government, assembling
the sparse and contradictory requests issued by the public authorities concerned in an
all-encompassing frame for action.
In conclusion, much has to be done to stimulate further research and public debate in
Europe and beyond. We think, however, that at least a first step has been made in
setting a common vocabulary, a tentative framework for analysis and a few anchor
points for the planning research agenda.

Notes
1. European Union, State Ministries and regional governments have been using grant schemes for financing
urban regeneration proposals submitted by local governments: the presence of preliminary agreements
between the public and private sectors is often used as a selection criterion on these occasions. The for-
mation of partnerships has been supported in the frame of the European Community Initiatives issued by
General Directorate for Regional Policies and the European Commission. Also, Ministries from several
member States have replicated this scheme: in the Netherlands, the Ministry for Housing and Planning
(VROM); in the UK, the former Deputy Prime Ministry Office; in France, the Ministère de le Equipement;
in Italy, the Ministry of Public Works and the Ministry for Transport and Infrastructures and similarly in
many other countries.
2. In order to gather and process information about the ongoing experiments, a number of National Govern-
ments have been promoting the formation of observatories for PPPs—consisting of governmental
agencies that provide technical support for public administrations, as in Ireland and the Netherlands
(Teisman et al., 2004). Elsewhere, non-profit organizations were created with the purpose of publishing
highly valued information for professionals and investors (for example, the Canadian Council for Public
Private Partnerships—CCPPP).
3. The snapshots are drawn from an in-depth analysis of PPP projects (Codecasa, 2008). Case studies are
drawn on a series of semi-structured interviews with project managers and secondary sources of infor-
mation (internal reports, policy documents, project briefings, local press articles) from October 2005 to
January 2008.
664 G. Codecasa and D. Ponzini

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