European funds: resources tripled for metropolitan cities and 39 medium-sized cities in the South

Listen to the audio version of the article

Resources more than tripled and extension to 39 medium-sized cities in the South: these are the two main novelties of the national Metropolitan Cities 2021-2027 programme, in Pon Metro jargon, which is worth around 3 billion euros between European funds and national co-financing (compared to the 860 million of the previous programming) to be invested in the ecological transition and social inclusion. The allocation quotas for the 43 cities will be defined in the coming weeks. The extension of the Pon Metro is implicitly a recognition of the cities’ ability to provide effective solutions to the economic, social and environmental problems of the territory.

Plan priorities and actions

Organized according to seven priorities, plus technical assistance, the Plan’s main objectives are the prevention and mitigation of climate change – the Green deal – and the fight against social exclusion – the European Social Pillar. Priorities five and six (services for social inclusion and innovation and infrastructure for social inclusion) which are worth a total of 327 million are intended exclusively for medium-sized cities in the South.

The Pon Metro 2021-2027 gives great priority to contrasting and mitigating environmental risk and sees the ecological transition as a potential opportunity for cities that will be able to adopt the paradigm of “circular cities”, that is to say, that will be able to effectively manage and integrated water, the waste cycle, the reduction of emissions and the organization of mobility and urban logistics. According to the plan, Italy’s high exposure to disaster risk is caused by hydro-geological fragility, but also by the serious consequences of the abandonment of rural areas and the risks due to hyper-urbanization and soil consumption which pose a threat for sustainability towards the territorial ecosystem. This risk is made more accentuated by climate change which impacts on rigid and complex infrastructures such as cities that need interventions to improve their resilience.

The plan includes, for example, interventions to make urban areas at hydrogeological and hydraulic risk safe; the prevention and contrast of the effects due to the lack of water supply due to climate change; works of climate proofing of urban infrastructures; reduction of the risk of heat islands in sensitive urban areas; monitoring and warning systems against dangerous meteorological events; interventions for the energy conversion of buildings, for the circular management of waste and finally, for sustainable mobility.