Building Resilience Through Territorial Planning: The Experience of Province of Potenza

In 2013, the Province of Potenza has adopted its provincial Master Plan, named Territorial Coordination Plan (TCP), that draws the local governmental proposals for the development of the provincial territory and, in particular, provides guidelines and support to the local actors (including Communities, private sector and Municipalities) for the correct land planning and use. Province of Potenza has territorial coordination competences over 100 Municipalities and is mostly characterized by all the mayor natural risks whose potential impacts on the community are very serious in case of disasters. For this reason, an important section of the TCP is dedicated to the risk assessment/management and to the mitigation activities as important actions to be performed also at the urban level. An innovative aspect developed in the TCP is the implementation of the “resilience of communities” policy in territorial planning, by introducing risks-mitigation directives and recommendations to be applied to the local and urban planning and strategic actions in order to involve the local actors, the private sector and the community itself in the resilience's implementation processes. The TCP gives some inputs to be followed by the Municipalities in their urban planning activities and Municipalities are asked to demonstrate how the urban planning proposals are resilient. For risks “active” mitigation at local level (namely the “structural” prevention), the Province will contribute - among the national/regional institutional framework - in seeking to promote or facilitate programs of territorial extraordinary maintenance to be implemented by the local governments, through the identification of possible financial mechanisms and procedural facilitation. The resilience process is accompanied by other territorial policy actions acting on the natural and built environment systems, such as strategies for adaptation to climate change and environmental protection, and by the technical, organizational and knowledge support provided to municipalities in the implementation process over the provincial territory.