Innovative approaches for retail planning. The design of territorial retail scenarios in Trentino (Italy)

The paper presents the recent evolution and development of Trentino retail planning policies and discusses an experimentation of a meta-evaluation methodology, namely Territorial Integrated Evaluation (TIE), for designing retail development scenarios. A research team from the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning of the Politecnico di Torino applied this methodology experimentally to the practices of spatial planning in order to integrate territory and retail in the Trentino development policies. The application of TIE set out to design territorial retail scenarios that integrated various topics –retail, tourism, infrastructure, nature and landscape. On the base of TIE principles and criteria, each Valley Community (VC) is now implementing to design its territorial retail scenarios assuming different approaches and visions in accord to its retail opportunities and risks. Starting from the presentation of some best practises, the paper focuses on the innovative perspective for retail planning and for retail sites designed in Trentino. The emerging regional policy is aimed at linking quality of territorial retail development with environmental sustainability, respecting attractiveness and balance among different retail sites.