Strategies and opportunities for Metropolitan Mid-Adriatic area in Marche Region. Regenerative actions to relaunch the competitiveness of urban-rural territorial systems

The article supports the proposal of a new Metropolitan Mid-Adriatic Area, and suggests innovative trajectories and future scenarios for the development of urban-rural policies for the metropolitan areas. Context Marche Region has carried out a "Community-Led Local Development" strategy to establish policies and guidelines for new forms of “urban-rural” territorial governance. The article aims to examine the role of the "city-region" in the centre of Italy, through the national and European metropolitan policies scenario, and propose innovative experiences of "integrated planning" to reinforce spatial and social relationship between city and countryside. The Italian national Law no. 56/14, based exclusively on dimensional criteria, excluded Marche region from the 15 Italian regions with urban areas classified as metropolitan areas (for the lack of an urban centre with more than 250,000 inhabitants), a territorial system with strong social and production potentials. The article propose to change the paradigm of the territorial government and consider new evaluation criteria to define “urban-rural” metropolitan area, based on the development of new territorial processes and multisectoral integration. This contribute explore current and future potential of territorial development (both urban and rural contexts), based on the case study developed by municipalities of the Ancona province, that created a territorial partnership called Mid-Adriatic Metropolitan Area (Area Metropolitana Medio Adriatica (AMMA) to experiment new method for the management of the territory. Conclusions The paper concludes by defining guidelines for an “urban-rural” relationship between internal areas and metropolitan cities. The Mid-Adriatic Metropolitan Area case study is a low-density territorial system, an urban framework built by social, functional and spatial relationship. The presence of more than four hundred thousand inhabitants will candidate this territorial context to the national agenda as a territorial model for EU investments for metropolitan areas. AMMA also represent an opportunity to apply new paradigms of innovative forms of urban rural governance for polycentric territories of central Italy.