Public Strategic Plans in Italian Local Governments : A Sustainability Development Focus?

Internationally there is an increasing relevance for the concept of sustainability development (SD), since the Brundtland report has been published. This has led governments and international institutions to promote organisations sustainability behaviours. The European Commission (EC) has published a variety of documents that encourage itself (Com(2001) 264 final; Com(2002) 82 final; Com(2005) 37 final; Com(2005) 658 final), national and regional governments (Com(2005) 718 final), and local governments (LGs) (Com(2006) 385 final), to adopt SD strategies. This study investigates what Italian LGs consider as a SD in their contemporary on-line published strategic plans (SPs), to address the lack of research in this topic. The research questions are the following: •What has been included in contemporary Italian LGs SPs? • What has or has not been reported in terms of SD basing on the EC framework for urban cohesion policy and cities (Com(2006)385 final) items? The study uses content analysis to determine the type and the extent of disclosure in specific media. An original coding instrument was developed to analyse the SPs practices against Com(2006)385 final items. It was found that SPs was voluntary. All items (policies and actions) basing on the Com(2006)385 final were disclosed. However the disclosure was stable and low under policies, while was instable under actions. The paper concludes that strategic planning in Italian LGs is still in its initial stage. Even thought, since EC framework for SD just suggest items to be chosen according to the LGs context, the study concluded that the group of SPs analysed shows to be aligned with EC recommendations