Voluntary Local Review of the Metropolitan City of Rome

Title The Voluntary Local Review of the Metropolitan City of Rome

Location Rome, Italy

Partners Città Metropolitana di Roma Capitale, Dipartimento di Architettura dell’Università degli Studi di Firenze, Avventura Urbana

 

Context

The reform of metropolitan cities and provinces initiated in Italy by Law No. 56/2014 marked a fundamental turning point for territorial governance. As part of this reform, the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital has initiated a long and articulated process aimed at redesigning institutional and territorial governance.

The choice of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital was therefore to experiment with the process of convergence between strategic planning and the drafting of the Metropolitan Agenda for Sustainable Development, aiming to innovate and rethink its activities and policies in close connection with the framework of the Sustainable Development Goals, and with the collaboration of universities, research centers and consultants.

Within this framework, the Metropolitan Strategic Plan (MSP) and the Metropolitan Agenda for Sustainable Development (AmSvS) are two pillars of the new governance. The tool of VLR, Voluntary Local Review, was included within this convergence to identify evidence-based strategies and actions with a view to rebalancing negative trends.

To this end, the VLR not only makes use of indicators available at the metropolitan and territorial level, but above all recognizes the institutional and socioeconomic actors of the territory as bearers of knowledge about the virtuosity and criticalities in place, but also key players, protagonists and co-designers of the possible change.

The first version of the VLR for the Metropolitan City of Roma Capitale was included in the Voluntary National Review submitted by Italy to the High Level Political Forum in 2022. While the second version complements the previous one with an analysis of metropolitan performance on sustainable development with a description of ongoing and/or planned actions, providing elements of collective direction.

 

General Objective

The VLR highlights the commitment, aspirations and critical issues of the metropolitan territory in relation to a vision of sustainable development, with the aim of accelerating and making strategies and actions more coherent.

Indeed, the main objective of the VLR of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital is to initiate and design a qualitative and quantitative monitoring process to implement the Sustainable Development Goals at the metropolitan level, identifying priorities and providing a detailed framework for monitoring the Metropolitan Agenda.

 

Our Contribution

The drafting of the Voluntary Local Review for the Metropolitan City of Roma Capitale sought to enhance the efforts of the metropolitan administration and related working groups by integrating the results of strategic planning and citizen engagement activities.

The process involved sources such as the proposed sustainable agenda, territorial databases, listening activities conducted by the Universities of Florence and Tor Vergata, and the MSP documents. The entire process was conducted in synergy with the definition of the MSP and the Metropolitan Agenda, in a continuous dialogue with the working groups and offices of the Metropolitan City of Roma Capitale.

In particular, this information base made it possible to obtain an analysis sheet for each Sustainable Development Goal consisting of the following sections:

  • Analysis of indicators at the metropolitan level, represented through infographics, tables and graphs and comparison with the regional and national level;
  • Cartographic representation of indicators at the territorial level and their interpretation;
  • Synthesis of opinions and proposals for action resulting from the series of meetings with area actors;
  • Consistency between policies and strategic directions.

The entire process took place in close synergy with the process of defining and approving the MSP and the Metropolitan Agenda, through continuous dialogue with all working groups and the relevant offices of the CmRC.

The VLR of the Metropolitan City of Rome is available below in Italian: