Territorial governance in the river districts: Methods and new tools for landscape design along the River Po

The chapter discusses innovations in the Italian river district policy with particular focus on the methods and practices that promote institutional cooperation and social responsibility. Keywords of this new perspective for the action along the rivers are: inclusiveness and multi-level governance at the aim to implement the link between spatial policies and urban project. The paper shows the in- novative vision in the Italian context that goes beyond the traditional sectorial approach in order to promoting coordinated, synergic action of different policies regarding water, protection of the land, landscape, biodiversity. In this view, the recent experimentation promoted in the territory alongside the Po River configures an inseparable system of relationships between actions, objects and stakeholders linked to territory and landscape. The policies promoted by the Po River Basin Authority encompass not only sector planning actions but also uses and activities of the territory, involving territorial institutions, park authorities, other sector representatives and, in particular, the local community who become actor and must know, discuss, dialogue and share a complex urban project whose success is closely tied to joint participation in decisions. In the Italian context, the Po river corridor represents the natural backbone of Northern Italy, an economic resource for inhabitants and agriculture, a landscape that can become the main factor of attraction able to stimulate new sustainable rural uses and recreational tourism activities.