Land use planning around major risk installations: From EC directives to local regulations in Italy

This paper offers some reflections regarding the application of regional and provincial laws concerning major industrial risks and urban and land use planning, and focuses on their application problems and capabilities with reference to some practical cases. The European Directive “Seveso 2” was implemented in Italy with two national laws, and in Piedmont they were enforced with the “Guidelines for the assessment of industrial risk in land use planning”. According to the Guidelines, the municipalities had to introduce into their urban and land use planning instruments new criteria for the areas around Seveso plants. The application of the Guidelines requires a multidisciplinary approach but local authorities are often not sufficiently prepared for this kind of multilevel analysis, because they do not have the human or economic resources or even the technical abilities necessary to conduct it. As a result, they can underestimate the importance of a correct urban and land planning in the areas around major risk installations.