Can Spatial Planning Be Transformative? Regenerating the Commons and Commoning Regeneration: The Case of the Ex-Isotta Fraschini Factory in Saronno, Italy

Challenges such as growing inequalities, environmental degradation, gentrification, and housing crises demand renewed approaches to spatial planning and urban regeneration models. Yet, conventional spatial planning instruments often remain technocratic and reflect neoliberal paradigms, prioritising spatial efficiency and private interests over socio-spatial relationships and public interests. Recent legal scholarship and case law have started to challenge this paradigm, reframing urban regeneration as an integral part of spatial planning oriented toward a balanced development of the territory and its community. Building on this view, the paper proposes a framework to reinterpret spatial planning for urban regeneration as a co-production process oriented towards the commoning, where diverse actors with heterogeneous values and interests engage in (re)generating the territory as a common while simultaneously (re)producing the community and its social fabric. The ex-Isotta Fraschini urban regeneration project in Saronno (Italy) serves as an illustrative case, highlighting the legal and institutional gaps that hinder the transition to this renewed approach. The paper also argues that urban space is never neutral, and spatial planning is inherently political. Addressing these challenges requires governance models and instruments that are both adaptable to the local context and institutionally guaranteed, to ensure communities’ meaningful participation in co-production processes and to counteract fragmented and market-driven interventions.