1. Introduction
Since the mid-19th century, land-use and territorial planning have been central to public strategies for long-term socio-economic development. States introduced property regulations to coordinate these transformations, and, over time, planning became a tool to balance public and private interests and to regulate authority-individual relationships (Mattei, 2011; Urbani, 2024). In that context, planning was conceived as a technical discipline for organising urban space primarily around goals like housing, employment, mobility, and leisure (Danger, 1933; Giannini, 1983; Le Corbusier, 2014). Thus, it responded to developments in city design (Agostini, 2022; Bartolini, 2022; Benevolo, 1963), focusing on balancing built and natural environments and on improving spatial efficiency (Campbell & Fainstein, 1996; Salzano, 2009). This approach was grounded on the notion that public authorities should act as neutral arbiters among competing interests, ensuring coordination through planning tools (Urbani, 1992, 2024). However, as it has become clear a few decades later, urban governance and planning instruments do not neutrally arbitrate interests but mediate struggles over land, often reconfiguring its uses and laying the groundwork for future processes of neoliberal financialisation (Gardini, 2020; Kaika & Ruggiero, 2015; Moskowitz, 2018).
Over the 20th century, new pressures exacerbated this picture: urban sprawl blurred the boundaries between the city and the countryside, while rapid urbanisation generated environmental challenges that required broader interventions (Boscolo, 2017). As a result, new pressures compelled the field of urban planning to expand beyond technical regulations (Salvia et al., 2021) and to shift its purpose from managing industrial-era conflicts to conceiving spatial organisation within a broader, more complex territorial framework that accounts for the internal and external dynamics of urban areas. This change is referred to as “spatial planning”1 (Agostini, 2022; Salvia et al., 2021; Van Assche et al., 2013).
More recently, rising inequalities, environmental degradation, gentrification, and housing crises have further reoriented spatial planning toward urban regeneration. As a polysemous concept (Bartolini, 2022; Giusti, 2018), urban regeneration is a coordinated set of planning and building interventions that aims to improve the economic, social, and environmental conditions of a territory (Giusti, 2023; Roberts, 2000), particularly where market forces fall short (Granger, 2010), and to reshape socio-spatial relationships. In its early stages, urban regeneration practices mainly sought to limit soil consumption through a “custodial” approach (Boscolo, 2014) but over time, the emphasis shifted to protecting land’s social function and intergenerational value (Italian Constitutional Court No. 179/2019; Pagliaroli, 2019).
However, the implementation of urban regeneration practices has often diverged from their stated objectives. Interventions justified in the name of sustainability or innovation have frequently reinforced exclusionary dynamics, acting as structural drivers of gentrification (Moskowitz, 2018; Raco, 2005; While et al., 2004), dismantling infrastructures of social reproduction such as housing or public infrastructures (Luke & Kaika, 2018), or generating new forms of displacement where real estate speculation appropriates public spaces and spatial policies (Tsavdaroglou & Kaika, 2024). In this sense, urban regeneration policies reveal a contradiction: while they aspire to pursue community wellbeing, they often operate within neoliberal governance frameworks that privilege land valorisation (Moskowitz, 2018; Raco, 2005; Tsavdaroglou & Kaika, 2024). Recognising this aspect exposes the limits of approaches that treat urban regeneration as a neutral, technical exercise, and underscores the need to redefine its aims and the regulatory instruments of spatial planning. If urban regeneration is to serve communities rather than displacing them, spatial planning as a general normative framework must not only technocratically govern urban changes, but also redefine the purposes and beneficiaries of spatial transformation (Foster & Iaione, 2016; Marcuse, 2009), and consequently redistribute decision-making power and control over land and resources (Fainstein, 2010; Gregori Ferri, 2024; Moskowitz, 2018). Understood in this way, urban regeneration can serve to counter gentrification, elitism, and greenwashing (Lanzani, 2024). Yet the challenge is to identify the legal and institutional frameworks that can effectively sustain this shift (Albrechts, 2012).
One promising direction has emerged from the debate over the commons (Agrawal et al., 2023), which offers alternative frameworks for governing resources and redefining social relations around territories. Within this debate and building on the insights of Carlone et al. (2022) and Luke and Kaika (2018), urban regeneration can be interpreted as a form of governance for the commons, shifting the focus away from market valorisation and toward extended governance and social reproduction. In this context, the commons should not be treated as static or spontaneous categories but as the outcomes of collective efforts and processes embedded in specific contextual features.
This paper is situated within this broader evolution and develops a conceptual framework of spatial planning for urban regeneration as a co-production process oriented towards commoning (Section 2). Both the literatures on co-production and commoning addresses the production of goods and services beyond the State-market dichotomy (Becker et al., 2016). Co-production highlights the possible synergies between government, citizens, and communities in the delivery of services (Aligica & Tarko, 2013; Bianchi et al., 2022; Lepenies et al., 2018; Löffler & Bovaird, 2021; Osborne et al., 2016; Ostrom, 1996; Pera et al., in press; Whitaker, 1980), while also strengthening their political roles and development capacities (Mitlin, 2008). Commoning, by contrast, conceptualizes the production and sharing of resources as a continuous negotiation (Aernouts, 2020), an activity (Linebaugh, 2007), and a form of social organization (Fournier, 2013), aimed at (re)producing both a common resource and the community (Carlone et al., 2022; Foster & Iaione, 2016; Gibson-Graham et al., 2016). Importantly, commoning seeks to provide an alternative to privatisation, speculation, and marketisation, rooted in the creation of new institutions and practices (Geagea et al., 2023).
Starting from this point, the paper then assesses whether current legal and institutional instruments support this shift. In other words, it investigates how the legal and institutional framework shapes opportunities for the co-production for the commoning in urban regeneration projects. Based on a review of the literature and recent case-law, our hypothesis is that the current legal and institutional framework for spatial planning has several limitations and lacks the necessary instruments to intervene effectively.
The investigation is grounded in Italy’s evolving spatial planning framework and urban regeneration practices, and it adopts a case-study approach. The case is the ex-Isotta Fraschini urban regeneration project in Saronno, where a former car factory is being redeveloped with the promise to return part of the site to the citizens as a common (Section 3). This project is an example of an “ex-place” where urban redesign and repurposing intertwine with the reinvention of social identity and organisation (Micciarelli, 2017, 2022). While the analysis centres on the Italian context, the framework and findings may also be relevant to other countries with similar planning trajectories.
The analysis confirms the hypothesis and exposes critical gaps in the existing legal and institutional framework. The discussion advances the literature on co-production and commoning by exploring potential synergies and examining the roles of public and non-public actors in supporting – or obstructing – such processes. The paper provides a dynamic understanding of the governance of the commons and suggests that spatial planning must evolve to enable and protect co-production and commoning practices against neoliberal development models, particularly in the context of urban regeneration projects. This approach requires reframing territorial dynamics as community-led processes that the laws and institutions should actively safeguard and integrate into the planning framework, ultimately contributing to the debate on the planning system’s ability to sustain or hinder more transformative models of urban regeneration (O’Brien & Hochachka, 2010; O’Brien & Sygna, 2013). Without robust institutional support, urban regeneration risks remaining fragile, rhetorical, or even co-opted by neoliberal agendas, rather than generating transformative and durable alternatives. Thus, this paper offers a framework for policy makers and legal practitioners to understand the entry points needed to unlock the full transformative potential of urban regeneration (O’Brien & Hochachka, 2010; O’Brien & Sygna, 2013).
2. Setting the stage: spatial planning for urban regeneration as a co-production process for the commoning
Historically, processes of territorial restructuring formalised through planning instruments and policies have often contributed to the financialisation of urban space, by erasing collective claims to land and prioritising commodification over social reproduction (Luke & Kaika, 2018). In this picture, narratives of sustainability, urban quality, and inclusion have coexisted with practices of market-oriented valorisation and displacement (Kaika & Ruggiero, 2015; Luke & Kaika, 2018; Tsavdaroglou & Kaika, 2024). Urban regeneration practices are no less exposed to these dynamics (Lanzani, 2024; Thompson, 2015), particularly where a regulatory vacuum exists, and those with greater power exploit the absence of rules to steer outcomes towards their own interests, such as profit or political gain (Micciarelli, 2022; While et al., 2004).
However, in Italy, urban regeneration has also given rise to collaborative forms of governing and managing urban assets inspired by the theory of the commons, which have increasingly emerged as tools to address environmental, social, and spatial inequalities (Bombardelli, 2016). A case in point is the Bologna Regulation on the Regeneration of the Urban Commons (Regolamento per la cura e la rigenerazione dei beni comuni urbani, first ed. 2014, up. 2023),2 often regarded as one of the first attempts in Italy to institutionalise a shared governance model through administrative agreements between citizens and the municipality (Arena, 1997, 2006; Donati, 2024; Miccicchè, 2018). Similar experiences have also occurred in other Italian cities with different legal configurations (Marella, 2013; Micciarelli, 2017, 2022), sharing an attempt to translate the principles of the commons into administrative practice (Lucarelli, 2018).
While these experiments suggest a gradual transition from linear models of growth to circular logics of care and reproduction (Lanzoni & Martínez, 2024), several authors (Lucarelli, 2018; Maddalena, 2011; Mattei, 2011; Micciarelli, 2017, 2022; Rodotà, 2011, 2018) point to the fact that the Italian legal system is inadequate in providing a comprehensive normative structure to institutionalise commons-oriented governance. Scholars have noted issues of ‘regulatory hypertrophy’, dispersed or overlapping instruments, and difficulty in establishing mechanisms ensuring the legal positions of collective actors (Micciarelli, 2017, 2022). Even where specific regulations exist, their implementation has often been confined to minor, low-intensity interventions and has been subject to strong public-authority control, confirming that the framework often produces subordination rather than effective autonomy for the communities involved (Marella, 2013; Putini, 2023). This dependency on public control limits its transformative power and reinforces the imbalance between communities and local authorities.
A contributing factor is the underlying theoretical weakness in Italian legal scholarship, where two principal interpretations of the commons can be identified (Donati, 2024). The first, classificatory, conceives the commons as an additional category of goods intended to complement the public-private property dichotomy. The second, relational, understands the commons as the outcome of social and institutional processes that enable shared use. Both perspectives remain centred on the role of public authorities, either as custodians of the goods or as regulators of collective use, and therefore, reproduce the same dualism they aim to transcend. This underlying theoretical ambiguity contributes to other structural weaknesses that hinder the consolidation of a new legal and institutional framework for the governance of the commons, including: i) the fragility of attempts to institutionalise such governance, since local regulations and practices often remain normatively weak; ii) the confinement of the commons debate to doctrinal discourse, with reform attempts failing and constitutional recognition still unresolved; and iii) the tendency to affirm commons rhetorically, without clear definitions or enforceable instruments (Bombardelli, 2016; Lucarelli, 2018; Maddalena, 2011; Marella, 2013; Micciarelli, 2022; Moroni, 2015; Putini, 2023; Rodotà, 2011, 2018).
Considering these challenges, legal theory and case law, fuelled by the commons debate, have increasingly highlighted the need to institutionalise an integrated conception of planning for urban regeneration that links spatial transformation with socio-economic objectives and long-term sustainability (Bartolini, 2022; Boscolo, 2024; Giusti, 2023; Stella Richter, 2022; Urbani, 2024). Italian jurisprudence has also affirmed that spatial planning powers are most effective when citizens are directly involved in articulating community needs through self-representation and self-determination (Council of State No. 2710/2012; Urbani, 2013). Thus, spatial planning for urban regeneration should foster a balanced collaboration among public and private entities, communities, and third-sector organisations, to protect constitutionally guaranteed values (Council of State Nos. 3316/2018, 2956/2017, 839/2015, 36/2014).
Overall, this conceptualisation of spatial planning recalls the idea of co-production, defined as “a process through which inputs from individuals who are not ‘in’ the same organization are transformed into goods and services” (Ostrom, 1996, p. 1073). Co-production involves lay actors in formulating and delivering goods and in shaping policies (Ansell et al., 2024; Whitaker, 1980), alongside public, private, and third-sector partners (Cornelius & Wallace, 2010). This practice is intended to improve the delivery of goods and services while fostering mutual learning (Lee & Scholten, 2024). Moreover, it offers insights into how actors with different values and interests cooperate to create public value (Aligica & Tarko, 2013; Ostrom, 1996); indeed, as stakeholders multiply, pluralist governance is required to mediate and negotiate potentially conflicting interests (Alfaro-d’Alençon & Torrent, 2020; La Rosa et al., 2017). However, co-production also has limitations. Most often, it does not define the nature of the output – i.e., whether it should be a common – nor does it provide broader governance direction (Becker et al., 2016). Instead, it often focuses on efficiency as a normative outcome (Lepenies et al., 2018). While some authors have stressed its potential to reshape citizens-State relations and democratic practices (Albrechts, 2012; Bianchi et al., 2022; McMillan et al., 2014; Mitlin, 2008; Pera et al., in press), co-production can occur in many ways and generate different political implications (Lepenies et al., 2018; Voorberg et al., 2015).
This conceptual gap between co-production processes among different actors and the uncertainty of outcomes opens the way to the notion of commoning, which provides the missing link between spatial planning for urban regeneration, co-production, and the commons. Commoning captures the continuous social, institutional, and political practices through which both the material and the social dimensions are re-produced (Carlone et al., 2022; Foster & Iaione, 2016; Gibson-Graham et al., 2016; Thompson, 2015), providing co-production with a goal, i.e., establishing a social organisation aimed at reproducing both shared resources and communities of reference (Fournier, 2013; Linebaugh, 2007). Linking the perspectives of co-production and commoning allows spatial planning for urban regeneration to be understood as a dynamic process with specific institutional, material, and socio-political outcomes, which then feed back into the spatial planning framework (see Figure 1).
Figure 1
Spatial planning for urban regeneration as a co-production process for the commoning.
Spatial planning for urban regeneration should enable a co-production process among different actors (i.e., public authorities, private stakeholders, civil society, third-sector organisations, and local communities) who co-produce rules for collective governance. These rules should aim at fostering practices of commoning, namely the reproduction of both a common resource, i.e., the area being regenerated, according to a collectively defined appropriate use, and its community of reference. Then, the common resource and the community nurture each other, as the community regenerates around the common, and the common is as such only by virtue of collective decision-making and use by the community. The outcomes of commoning, then, should feed back into and inform the spatial planning framework. The final aim is the transformative change of the political, practical, and personal spheres, through new legal and institutional frameworks, tools, and power relations that enable new practices of spatial planning and, in turn, foster new imaginaries of urban regeneration.
Source: Authors’ elaboration.
The co-production framework captures the essence of urban regeneration as a process involving heterogeneous communities (Micciarelli, 2017, 2022), each with different motivations, interests, powers, and capacities. The commoning perspective complements this by reinforcing the democratic ambition of co-production (McMillan et al., 2014; Mitlin, 2008), while also shaping the outcomes of urban regeneration toward social, economic, and environmental sustainability, through new forms of social organisation. The goal is to generate new spaces and social systems (De Angelis & Harvie, 2013) free from speculation and privatisation (Festa, 2017; Harvey, 2012), which serve a social utility function. Adding a commoning perspective therefore advances the democratisation of resource governance, an aspect less developed in co-production theory (Ansell et al., 2024; Pera et al., in press).
Nonetheless, spatial planning for urban regeneration as a co-production and commoning process is deeply embedded in broader institutional and legal systems: variations in these systems shape what can be achieved, how, and by whom, thereby influencing both the content and the outcomes (Bianchi et al., 2022; Micciarelli, 2017, 2022; Shelby, 2022; Villamayor-Tomas et al., 2019). In our framework, the sequence ‘spatial planning for urban regeneration – co-production – commoning – commons’ thus expresses a continuum from institutions to processes and practices, then back to institutions. Spatial planning sets the legal and institutional framework for urban regeneration projects; co-production activates collective processes of rule definition; commoning gives these practices a social organisation and scope, and regenerated commons emerge as their institutional consolidation, together with regenerated communities and collective wellbeing. Then, as in a feedback loop, the outcomes of commoning foster new changes and evolutions in the spatial planning framework. In this sense, spatial planning is not a neutral regulatory practice but a political process through which competing interests are mediated and collective aspirations take form, and that itself evolves with emerging processes and practices (Benevolo, 1963; Secchi, 2000).
This vision reflects a broader evolution in urban regeneration, emphasising it as a strategy for preserving heritage and sustaining the living practices that give meaning to a place. This requires balancing conservation with use and viewing transformation as a dynamic, collective process (Iaione, 2018; Mattei, 2011; Stella Richter, 2022). While land must be protected from overuse, intangible assets, such as the social and cultural fabric, depend entirely on continued community use. In this picture, a key concern is the appropriate use of space, not merely as a physical asset but in relation to its history, function, and social role, to combine strategic design with public interest, and to ensure that interventions support collective wellbeing rather than market priorities. This recalls the three interrelated dimensions of commoning: collective allocation and management of resources (“organising in commons”), defining appropriate use (“organising for the commons”), and (re)producing both the resource and the community (“organising of the commons”) (Fournier, 2013).
Thus, the framework is in line with the case law of Italian courts that have called for planning instruments that foster collaboration among public authorities, private actors, communities, and third-sector organisations to protect constitutionally guaranteed values (Council of State Nos. 3316/2018, 2956/2017, 839/2015, 36/2014) and that account for local communities’ needs and the vocation, history, and tradition of each place, inviting a type of spatial planning that enables transformative change through participation, self-representation, and self-determination (Council of State, Nos. 2710/2012, 960/2015, 8670/2024). Under this view, land value arises not only from regulation but from the transformation of social relations and custodian practices through collective use, the essence of commoning (De Angelis & Harvie, 2013).
Ultimately, if successful, this spatial planning model could drive transformative change across practical, political, and personal spheres (De Angelis, 2017; O’Brien & Hochachka, 2010; O’Brien & Sygna, 2013; Stavrides, 2022). First, it could orient urban regeneration practices towards outcomes rooted in social cohesion and spatial quality rather than market speculation. Secondly, it could foster new legal and institutional relations, as citizens become co-producers of rules instead of mere executors of pre-established ones. Finally, it could transform individual and collective imaginaries and desires about the purpose of urban regeneration, reinforcing co-production processes towards commoning as a new framework for generating values and worldviews.
3. Methods
3.1. Case study: the ex-Isotta Fraschini area
The ex-Isotta Fraschini industrial site (hereinafter, the area or the site) in Saronno is among the most significant urban regeneration projects in Northern Italy. The city of Saronno is a municipality of approximately 40,000 inhabitants in the Lombardy region; due to its geographical location – close to the Malpensa Airport, between the Milan and the Varese provinces – and the presence of both the railway and the highway, the city of Saronno is a major infrastructural hub. Over time, this aspect has favoured the development of a flourishing industrial system that, however, has experienced a decline since the 1990s. Together with the industry, the collective identity attached to it has progressively been lost. Nowadays, the people of Varese usually consider Saronno to be the ‘north of Milan’, and the people from Milan consider it ‘south of Varese’. Therefore, there is a risk that the city may become a ‘dormitory town’ if a new identity and a sense of community belonging are not re-created.
In this scenario, the regeneration of the ex-Isotta Fraschini represents an opportunity for Saronno to find another way to rebuild its identity and community. Covering 120,000 square meters, the area hosted the “Fabbrica Automobili Isotta Fraschini Milano” from the 1930s to the mid-1990s (see Figure 2). At its peak, the factory employed over 500 workers and contributed to the socio-economic development of Saronno and its surroundings. Production ceased in the late 1980s, initiating a long period of decline and neglect. Subsequently, the area became a large brownfield, enclosed by walls and disconnected from the city’s life; a “non-place”3 that created a rupture in the urban fabric (see Figures 3 and 4). In response, citizens and associations mobilised, calling for participatory planning to requalify the site, restore green spaces, and revitalise the town. To address this, the municipality launched the “Forum Isotta” participatory process in the 1990s, but it failed to yield concrete results, and the site remained abandoned.
Figure 2
Aerial view of the ex-Isotta Fraschini site in Saronno.
Credits: CZA Cino Zucchi Architetti.
Figure 3
The interior of one of the collapsing buildings.
Credits: Ph. Riccardo Banfi.
Figure 4
Graffiti art inside one of the abandoned buildings in the area.
Credits: Ph. Riccardo Banfi.
In 2019, the impasse was broken when the company Saronno – Città dei Beni Comuni S.r.l.4 (“Saronno – City of Common Goods” hereinafter, the Company) acquired the area through a bankruptcy auction. It launched a “regeneration project for the common good”, rejecting speculation and urban sprawl. Its vision is to return the space to citizens, with goods and services of social utility, co-managed through collegial bodies. The plan includes residential, commercial, and cultural functions, with half the area – 60.000 square meters – dedicated to a public park.
Participatory governance is central to the project: the Company has engaged residents through public assemblies and events and presented its first development plan in July 2020. It has also hosted site visits and launched tree-planting and decontamination efforts. Local associations have resumed public events, reopening the area after 30 years. By reconnecting the site with the city’s social and spatial fabric, the project aims to transform a landmark in decline into a space for the regeneration of the collective identity and community life of Saronno. The project reflects a shift in urban planning: from market-led approaches to commoning models, where communities govern and care for urban space to ensure long-term social and environmental sustainability. The initiative rethinks urban regeneration, aligning spatial development with constitutional principles, thus affirming the social function of property (Art. 42 It. Const.) and the community’s right to shape the urban environment (Boscolo, 2017). However, the project nowadays remains unapproved, as procedural complexities and successive changes in local government have continuously hindered its implementation.
3.2. Data collection and analysis
Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and document analysis. By analysing reports and bulletins, newspaper articles, and video interviews (See the document listed in the references section), we achieved a more precise reconstruction of the area’s history, providing a clearer picture of the interests at stake. Semi-structured interviews enabled direct engagement with some of the people involved in the project or having an attachment to the site to uncover their visions, desires, and expectations about the area’s past and future.
We designed the interview guidelines to elicit respondents’ views on the area, their perspectives on the regeneration project led by the Company, perceived obstacles, and the public administrations’ role in the process. A final question explored their understanding of the concept of a common good. Respondents were selected based on their connection to the site and involvement in organising local activities. First, we interviewed a representative of the Company. Then, we identified four relevant citizen groups by resorting to snowball sampling, and we conducted: 1) one group interview with four of the former employees of the Isotta Fraschini factory; 2) one paired semi-structured interview with two members of a youth-founded company based in Saronno, dedicated to organizing music festivals; 3) one semi-structured interview with one of the organizers of a local festival addressing labour issues and future challenges for young generations; and 4) one semi-structured interview with a graffiti writer, who realized some graffiti on site (see Figure 4). Finally, we also conducted two separate interviews with two representatives of the Municipality – see Table 1 for synthesis.
Table 1
Summary of the number of interviewees and related interview format.
| INTERVIEW NO. | INTERVIEWEES (AND NUMBER OF SUBJECTS INVOLVED) |
|---|---|
| 1 | Representative of the Company (1) |
| 2 (group interview) | Former employees (4) |
| 3 (paired interview) | Music festivals organisers (2) |
| 4 | Youth festival organiser (1) |
| 5 | Graffiti writer (1) |
| 6 | Representative A of the Municipality (1) |
| 7 | Representative B of the Municipality (1) |
[i] Source: Authors’ elaboration.
These interviews were conducted in Italian, either in person or via video call, and they lasted between one and two hours.5 Prior to each interview, we obtained verbal informed consent and agreed to keep anonymity. The process concluded upon reaching an in-depth understanding of the case.
4. Results and discussion
The case of the ex-Isotta Fraschini provides the opportunity to test the hypothesis that the current legal and institutional framework effectively limits the capacity of spatial planning for urban regeneration to function as a co-production process for the commoning. The interviews also shed light on the respondents’ views and aspirations regarding the urban regeneration of the area and the role of public authorities. The analysis distinguishes between: i) structural deficiencies, focusing on the legal and institutional barriers embedded in the planning framework, and ii) limitations in public authorities’ action, including administrative and political delays, the absence of a strategic framework for interventions, and limited transparency.
4.1. Co-production for the commoning beyond ownership and control
In the Company’s view, the regeneration project of the ex-Isotta Fraschini area should promote shared governance and generate socio-economic benefits for the local community, in contrast with the market-led and speculative logic that has dominated most brownfield redevelopments in Northern Italy. The Company’s goal is to redefine the governance of at least part of the area as a common rooted in collective identity that still endures decades after the factory’s closure, thus ensuring that the benefits of the area’s development are shared with the community rather than totally absorbed by private or public actors. The masterplan reflects these principles: it repairs the current spatial fragmentation of the city, strengthens the relationship between the green and built environments, and proposes a diversified housing mix combining affordable and market-rate units (Figure 5).
Figure 5
Masterplan for the regeneration project.
Credits: CZA Cino Zucchi Architetti.
According to the Company, the regeneration project of the site emerged from both negative and positive motives. On the negative side, land development – whether public or private – is often driven by short-term objectives tied to ownership and control or political interests, rather than collective benefits. As noted by a Company representative: “Even the local authority is at risk of acting from a private property mindset” (Int. 1). On the positive side, a strong attachment to the site endures, rooted in decades of labour, memory, and belonging. The same interviewee, also a resident of Saronno, explained that the purchase of the area arose from indignation toward its decline and a sense of responsibility toward the community: “What we [the residents of Saronno] experienced with the closure of the ex-Isotta Fraschini area was an expropriation, not of a private property, but of a certain relationship with the territory” (Int. 1).
The Company explicitly contrasted its initiative with previous regeneration attempts in Saronno that produced supermarkets and retail complexes disconnected from local needs. The declared goal is to reverse this logic from the beginning, by “opening the process [from the project design stage] to the community”, hosting site visits and activities to re-establish a shared responsibility and care of the area. As the Company’s representative stated: “The Company’s position is far from saying ‘it is mine, and I do what I want’. There is an inter-generational aspect: the citizenry uses it, feels a sense of ownership, and each generation can leave its own mark on it” (Int. 1).
This vision challenges the traditional opposition between the complete freedom of use characterizing private property and the strict authority’s control over public areas, reframing governance around a co-obligation among multiple actors whose concern is not full ownership but the principle that the common must remain beyond private appropriation, precisely because it is destined to be a common according to its history and its relationship with the community (Laval & Dardot, 2015). In this sense, the Company aims to establish a shared governance system between heterogeneous actors and groups, which can “represent the different souls of the place,” maintaining “a close tie with the citizenship and reconnecting the area to the community” (Int. 1). Regeneration is thus understood not as a technical task but as a new form of social organization and a collective commitment to re-imagine Saronno beyond “its image as a dormitory city characterised by brownfields” (Int. 1), thus more in line with the idea of commoning.
With respect to the other interviews, while they express diverse perspectives on the regeneration of the site, they converge on a shared aspiration to re-appropriate the area through a non-excludable logic that allows plural visions and uses to coexist. Former employees described the site as “a space of social bonds and identity”, rather than just a workplace, recalling that after the closure they “formed a group of elderly former employees, collecting documents and advocating for a museum to pass memory to younger generations” (Int. 2). For them, the regeneration project foreseen by the Company represents a way to preserve and transmit the history of the place to future generations.
Younger residents, instead, reinterpret the site as a space for experimentation and open participation, rather than memory. Members of a youth-founded association stated: “It would be presumptuous to think the space should be used exclusively for our events. It is important that everyone can associate it with what feels most meaningful to them” (Int. 3). A festival organiser similarly remarked: “We chose the ex-Isotta Fraschini site for the festival because there is no better place to discuss about work. The area is a local symbol of labour” (Int. 4). Artists contributed to this reappropriation through creative acts: “We did a study of the history of the Isotta, and we tried to make the design of our graffiti interact with the historical part and the machinery” (Int. 5). Across these perspectives, a shared demand emerges: “Even during the festival, people peeked in through the open gate. Not being able to get in there remains a collective regret. Many attended the festival out of interest in the area itself, highlighting the deep curiosity and connection people feel toward this place” (Int. 4).
Thus, in line with the Company’s view, the site’s reopening appears as more than a matter of architectural design and spatial regeneration: it also embodies care, the recovery of an identity, and a means of rebuilding a sense of belonging. The view that “the project could only improve the city culturally, environmentally, and historically” (Int. 5) is shared by all respondents. The fear expressed by a former worker that “if this project fails, another supermarket will rise in its place” (Int. 2) underscores the project’s symbolic charge as an opportunity to redefine development priorities in Saronno, shifting from the perceived dominant paradigm of short-term private profit to community and intergenerational benefits.
4.2. Legal and institutional barriers
Overall, the interviews reveal a shared aspiration for the urban regeneration of the area to take the form of a co-production process oriented toward the commoning. First, interviewees understand urban regeneration as the negotiated outcome of interactions among different citizens and groups whose legitimacy stems not from ownership but from identity and place-based affiliation (Fournier, 2013). Second, for all respondents, the Company’s project represents an alternative to private appropriation and speculation, an approach that seeks to regenerate both the area as a physical space and the social fabric. Importantly, the case also demonstrates the potential of this emerging model of spatial planning for urban regeneration, grounded in co-production and commoning, to evolve even within traditional property structures (Bauwens et al., 2024; Gibson-Graham et al., 2016), namely private property. Yet, the plurality inherent in co-production for the commoning entails diverse aspirations that may lead to contestation and fragility (Borch & Kornberger, 2015; Boucquey & Fly, 2021; Lorenzini & von Jacobi, 2024). Thus, its outcomes are necessarily negotiated and should be supported by appropriate institutional and legal frameworks, giving rise to what Madison et al. (2010) describe as “constructed commons”.
However, these objectives have not been fully internalised, neither at the legislative level nor within planning practice, exposing the inadequacy of the Italian legal and institutional framework in realising the willingness and capacity to share among the subjects involved (Laval & Dardot, 2015). Although the Company has been actively promoting a co-production process that includes the community, the institutional and legal framework continues to privilege ownership-based legitimacy over lived territorial ties. Citizens are treated as an audience without legal standing, whose engagement remains contingent on the discretion of public authorities and the consent of property owners. In practice, public authorities tend to rely on formal criteria, such as property ownership, which may result in the exclusion of citizens or groups without property titles. In this way, they adopt an easily enforceable yet highly restrictive criterion, which simplifies complex legitimacy assessments and reduces the administrative burden associated with including an undefined number of participants.
As a result, urban regeneration risks being confined to a bilateral negotiation between public authorities and private owners or developers, in which formal compliance with a property-based legal framework is invoked to justify the exclusion of the community. This would mean operating within a balancing of interests that may not be legitimate when it transcends the demands of the local community that, according to consolidated case law, must remain central in the exercise of planning powers by public authorities. The main instrument of implementation for this model, the planning agreement (convenzione urbanistica), institutionalises this bilateral logic. It enables the exchange of rights and obligations between public authorities and property right holders, but it does not allow public authorities to confer a legal position on communities with place-based legitimacy to actively participate in the co-production of rules. In this configuration, co-production processes involving active community participation are acknowledged discursively yet remain unrecognised juridically, leaving urban regeneration projects such as the ex-Isotta Fraschini vulnerable to political discretion and instability.
These structural limitations reveal a deeper contradiction between constitutional principles and the instruments used to implement planning. Indeed, the Italian Constitution and case law have a vision of property and planning grounded in social function and collective well-being. For instance, administrative case law has affirmed that planning must balance competing interests and promote socio-economic well-being (Council of State, No. 2710/2012). Thus, planning should not be merely concerned with regulating property rights; it should extend beyond land-use allocation to encompass the integration of social, economic, and environmental dimensions into the urban model. The case law has also explicitly called for the “balanced realisation of a plurality of public interests grounded in constitutionally guaranteed values” (Council of State, Nos. 36/2014; 839/2015), recognising the role of citizens in articulating community perspectives through forms of self-representation and participation. On the other hand, planning instruments continue to rely on proprietary logics.6 This persistent gap between constitutional aspirations and the legal and institutional framework for spatial planning leaves public authorities with broad discretion and local communities without enforceable mechanisms to institutionalise co-production and secure rules for value co-creation and sharing.
4.3. Limitations in local governance: delays, absence of a strategic framework for intervention, and limited transparency
The history of the ex-Isotta Fraschini area also exposes how bureaucratic and political delays, combined with the absence of a strategic framework for territorial intervention and limited transparency, could undermine the transformative potential of urban regeneration. Although all interviews revealed broad agreement on the project’s value, its implementation has been affected for years by procedural delays. Several respondents attributed these delays to a combination of bureaucratic constraints and political hesitation by the local government (Int. 2; Int. 4). As of today, repeated proposals by the Company have not yet progressed to a final approval, as successive local governments, irrespective of political orientation, have not reached a conclusive decision. Municipal representative A observed that the large scale of the initiative, the significant investments involved, and its perceived political implications have fuelled internal divisions and created resistance (Int. 6). In addition, a strong strategic horizon for public interventions is missing, thereby each local government interprets the ex-Isotta Fraschini project differently: some fear its scale others its impacts.
These remarks reveal a recurring feature of Italian urban governance: planning processes remain vulnerable to entrenched interests. In this perspective, planning is inherently political (Benevolo, 1963; Urbani, 2023): political dynamics and the variability of interests significantly determine planning results. Therefore, competing visions of the city’s future can paralyse decision-making rather than favouring a negotiated outcome. Public authorities thus operate reactively rather than proactively, unable to perform the enabling role required for shared governance (Foster, 2011; Guzzi, 2016). Instead of guiding urban regeneration projects through clear objectives, public authorities remain trapped in uncertainty, unable to provide the strategic overview needed to mediate among public, private, and community interests, with decision-making dispersed across political mandates and technical offices. In this context, especially local governing bodies struggle to fulfil their enabling role (Foster, 2011), thereby risking deeper social divides rather than cohesive urban growth. The case underscores governance weaknesses, where regulatory gaps and unclear guidance hinder progress and add complexity (Bussu et al., 2022; Cannavò & Zupi, 2019; Pera et al., 2023).
This institutional discontinuity also results from the public authorities’ lack of a broad, strategic overview of the city’s planning, one that is detached from single interventions and capable of translating long-term spatial goals into action. This absence results in the episodic treatment of urban regeneration as a sequence of isolated projects rather than as part of an integrated territorial vision (Chiti, 2017). In this context, project approvals often require ad hoc amendments to the local general master plan (piano regolatore generale), allowing the local authority to justify procedural delays. While such exceptions may address specific local conditions, they also introduce arbitrariness and legal uncertainty, intensifying the risk of market capture. Indeed, when strategic vision is absent, large-scale projects can easily be steered toward speculative development under the rhetoric of urban renewal. In the ex-Isotta Fraschini case, former factory workers voiced concern that in case of failure of the project, a new commercial area would take its place (Int. 2), reflecting the fear that urban regeneration is co-opted by real-estate logic and leads to the privatisation of public space (Lanzani, 2024; Palermo, 2022; Urbani, 2024).
At the root of this problem also lies the absence, at the legislative level, of binding value-capture and redistribution mechanisms commensurate with the massive value uplift generated by urban regeneration processes, characterised by a high differential between the residual value of brownfields and the high market value of the regenerated site. Without legal instruments providing adequate criteria, local authorities rely on discretionary negotiations that expose them to both political pressure and personal liability if they act beyond codified powers, i.e., requiring more than what is prescribed by the regulations in force. This structural gap prevents local administrations from securing substantial gains to be reinvested in the social and cultural fabric, thereby reproducing speculative dynamics rather than fostering commoning and the collective reproduction of urban commons (De Angelis & Harvie, 2013; Festa, 2017).
A second limitation concerns the limited transparency of decision-making and weak communication with the local community, which reflects the broader above-mentioned issue that lay citizens are not recognised as actors in the co-production process. Several interviewees recalled that the local authority often acted without timely updates. As the event organisers noted, “At one point, the local administration suspended all public events in the area, blocking any initiative before it could begin” (Int. 3). Others expressed frustration over the lack of information: “It is frustrating because it is a very beautiful project” (Int. 4). Former factory workers, who maintain a strong symbolic connection to the site, voiced similar concerns: “All we can do is to wait for the administration’s decision, but there is a growing fear that the Company will lose patience and abandon the project. That would feel like a moral defeat, leaving space for another supermarket” (Int. 2). These accounts highlight how opaque procedures erode trust and weaken accountability. The legal framework exacerbates this issue: outside specific obligations – such as those included in environmental impact assessment processes – public disclosure of planning documents is largely discretionary. In practice, full transparency typically occurs only after the “pre-approval” (adozione) of a development plan by the competent local governing body. Consequently, participation of subjects other than property right holders is limited to the late stages of the process, when key decisions have already been taken.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we propose a new conceptual understanding of spatial planning for urban regeneration as a co-production process for the commoning. We start from the recognition that, in Italy, urban regeneration has already given rise to shared practices for governing urban assets as commons, albeit under heterogeneous legal configurations. Legal theory and case law likewise point toward a framework in which spatial transformation is tied to the (re)production of social fabric and community well-being.
Starting from this conceptualisation, this paper proposes a new conceptual understanding of spatial planning for urban regeneration as a co-production process for the commoning, which can inform reforms of the spatial planning framework. Co-production provides insights into spatial planning as a process of co-creation among actors with heterogeneous, sometimes competing, values, views, and interests. Commoning instead provides direction and scope for this process by orienting it to the (re)production of both common resources and communities through continuous practices, thus aligning co-production with socially beneficial regeneration and the democratisation of resource governance. Taken together, these perspectives offer a coherent way to analyse, and potentially enable, a more transformative spatial planning model. This study contributes to the literature by showing how these perspectives can enrich one another and offer a deeper understanding of spatial planning as developed in legal and scholarly debates. Moreover, linking co-production and commoning reframes spatial planning as an evolving institutional practice: institutions shape processes, processes (re)produce communities and common resources, and these outcomes, in turn, reshape the planning framework.
Then, we assess the capacity of the current legal and institutional framework to support this view. Drawing on the case of the ex-Isotta Fraschini site, and using qualitative methods, we confirm our hypothesis that the current legal and institutional spatial planning framework contains significant gaps that hinder urban regeneration conceived as co-production for the commoning. The paper identifies structural and operational barriers, including the absence of formalised co-production mechanisms, administrative and political inertia, limited transparency, and a fragmented, case-by-case approach to spatial development projects. When the level of inclusion of communities in the planning process depends on public authorities’ discretion and/or property owners’ consent, the co-creation of rules and public value remains informal and fragile, in tension with constitutional principles and consolidated case law. Moreover, the lack of criteria for the redistribution of the increased values created by the regenerated area – particularly critical in brownfield transformations – makes decision-making vulnerable to entrenched interests and can lead to paralysis, as illustrated by the ex-Isotta Fraschini project, if not market capture. This prevents the realisation of meaningful commoning practices and, in turn, negatively impacts the commons, hindering the material and social reproduction of shared resources and attached social fabric, which should represent the social outcome of urban regeneration processes.
The qualitative analysis highlights the need to move beyond the current property-based bilateral planning model toward governance grounded in democratic co-production and legitimacy based on social-territorial bonds. The study also shows that governing regeneration through fragmented and ad hoc amendments to the general master plan weakens the ability of local authorities to establish a coherent horizon for urban development. The current legal and institutional framework should therefore be complemented by instruments that: i) recognise communities as equal partners in defining the governance of urban regeneration projects; ii) ensure transparency and participation at the start; and iii) introduce binding mechanisms for value redistribution, consistent with the social function of private property. Without such reforms, spatial planning risks remaining unable to realise the transformative potential of urban regeneration across social, environmental, and economic dimensions.
Future research should explore how co-production mechanisms can be designed and incorporated into the legal framework to support long-term reproduction processes of commons and communities in urban regeneration processes.
Notes
[2] According to Van Assche et al. (2013, p. 179), “Spatial planning is concerned with how people shape and govern spaces and takes into account social, economic, and environmental issues”. In this article, the term replaces “urban planning” to underscore a shift from a city-centric to a broader territorial perspective, encompassing both material dimensions and the social and economic processes affecting communities.
[4] https://inviaggio.touringclub.it/consigli-di-viaggio/storia-e-speranze-dellex-fabbrica-isotta-fraschini-a-saronno (Authors’ translation).
[5] “S.r.l.” stands for società a responsabilità limitata, the Italian equivalent of a private limited liability company.
[6] The excerpts from the interviews presented in this article have been translated into English by the Authors.
[7] See, among others, Articles 2, 3, 9, 42, and 118(4) of the Italian Constitution, which outline a model of property and public action oriented toward solidarity and community participation. In line with these principles, the Court of Cassation, Joint Sections (14 February 2011, No. 3665) clarified that the classification of a good depends not merely on ownership but on its function and social utility, confirming that the protection of human dignity extends to goods serving collective interests, regardless of formal ownership. This evolution in case law signals a shift from a proprietary to a collectivist understanding of property, prioritising its social function over its legal status (Stella Richter, 2022).
Use of artificial intelligence
We have not used any generative AI in writing this paper.
Acknowledgements
Our first big thanks go to all interviewees for their contributions: this paper would not have been possible without them. We are also particularly grateful to the participants of the workshop “Bridging Schools of Thought: New Frontiers in the Research on Commons and Commoning” for their valuable comments on earlier drafts. Other special thanks go to Avv. Chiara Pagliaroli for her legal insights throughout the research, and to Giacomo Maino for his support with visualizations. Last but not least, we want to sincerely thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on previous versions of this research, as they have significantly helped us to improve its quality.