The regional authority institutionally covers various competences in relation to the territory, from the control of urban planning on a municipal scale, to territorial planning, to landscape protection; it is a structure that moves on a vast area scale but influences up to the municipal scale.

The Piedmont Region has a convinced vision of a federalist model of territorial government; this vision implies that there should be the utmost respect from the body above towards the bodies below: a non-hierarchical relationship, not one of command, but on the contrary of the utmost respect for those directly elected by the people.

There is no intention to ‘command’ the territory from the Region, except through two instruments: legislative acts (the urban planning law, sector laws, resolutions), or participation in co-planning procedures.

The aim is to move beyond the model in which the regional official judges, evaluates the products of the people’s elected representatives, to a model in which the elected and the official dialogue together: it is the mayor who convenes the co-planning conference. While equal dignity between the region and local authorities is ensured, on the other hand, the region is responsible for

– the protection of superior interests (with right of veto in the co-planning conference);

– the task of bringing news and lessons that the municipality may not know;

– the definition of strategic or protection lines through higher level instruments (PTR/PPR/CTCP co-planning conference): these instruments are formed by regional and provincial assemblies and approved by elective assemblies (especially regional ones), a homogeneous chain is reformed, whereby the people recognise themselves in the territory, the government of the territory is entrusted to elected representatives of the will of the people.

In any case, the aim is to achieve the overcoming of any technocratic, doctrinal vision of territorial government, with a return to instruments that have maximum comprehensibility.

The main work that now needs to be undertaken with respect to the regional landscape pine, which has been adopted and observed, but not yet countered, is not so much the resumption of analysis repertoires, but their sharing. We must obtain an ability of the municipal administrations to find themselves in the representation of the PPR, finding in those repertoires their own specificity and standards that serve the local level.

In practice, we would like to arrive at an object called the municipal package, which is the making available to each individual municipality of the body of knowledge rooted within the region, with files organised by municipality (avoiding that it is the municipality that has to search at various locations in the plans, laws, databases for information on its territory). In this way, the municipality can find the knowledge (technical, administrative) it can evaluate and use for its own actions.

An example: Piedmont’s candidature for Unesco, for valuable areas in the wine-growing territories of the provinces of Asti, Alessandria and Cuneo. The birth of the candidacy was not easy: the municipalities gradually realised that they had to accept strict rules for the control of their urban planning instruments; many mayors initially thought that the weight of the constraints was greater than the benefits and therefore ran away. When the application took shape, many municipalities came back: the municipality in its autonomy understands when the constraints-opportunities relationship brings it advantages, recognising not only the protection of its territory, but also the potential macro- and microeconomic advantages.

The municipalities concerned have realised that this autonomy is positively oriented by higher level instruments, and that therefore the acceptance of the constraint and setting as an objective the final quality of the urban and landscape action, can be positive actions, when there is an external recognition of territorial qualities and excellences.

However, the accepted and shared constraint is a stable norm that overcomes creeping contestation, becomes an integral part of the construction of the landscape, leaving a future for our territory.

On the other hand, every constraint is subject to the analysis of the administrative court, the Region knows that the courts are attentive and do not allow encroachments that exceed constitutional freedoms.