Implementing Strategic Environmental Assessment of spatial planning tools. A study on the Italian Provinces

After more than a decade from the publication of the European Directive 2001/42/CE (Directive) on Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA), the design and construction of the interested spatial planning instruments has gone through a variety of changes and integrations in European and in world states. This inhomogeneous panorama can be explained with a pattern of institutional structures that have so far affected the implementation of the Directive. The aim of this paper is to investigate the level of implementation of the Directive in Italy by developing a comparative analysis of the quality of integration of SEA within the design of the spatial coordination plan of a set of Italian provinces. The results reveal a generally poor implementation of the Directive at the provincial level and, in particular, the emergence of four critical areas of research with respect to institutional context, public participation, monitoring, and observatory of the spatial transformations.