Urban time policies in Italy: an overview of time-oriented research

Abstract

Italian urban times policies ( "tempi della città") started in the early 1990s when a reform of the local authorities empowered mayors to coordinate timetables of services to the public in order to gear their availability more closely to their users' needs. Such coordination involves close examination of the schedules that regulate human relationships in the urban setting. A number of municipalities have embarked on such projects, sometimes within a broader framework of regional regulation. The distinctive feature of the Italian experience, in a European perspective, is its emphasis on practical innovation, experimentation, and intervention at local level, starting out from the first experiments in Modena and Reggio Emilia. The cultural, social and economic transformations currently underway in Europe call for an informal rather than a rigidly legislative approach to time policies. The main new trends, in terms of time-related issues, may be summarised as follows: a new organisation of daily working time and annual schedules; increasing mobility; a new approach to reconciling occupational work and caring activities; a new interpretation of rationality; an "electronic" time dimension. Flexibility, mobility, speed, and objective time, but also memory, identity, and presence are typical features of the post-modern cultural landscape and are expressions based on time. The debate over urban times is strongly imbued with women's influence, in its attention to subjects present in their habitat, to the value of everyday life and activity, to the complex rationalities that inspire action. In this way bodies become the yardstick for action to shape city times. Public policy on city times initially focused on redesigning timetables for services to the public or trading activities. Today, within a framework geared to a qualitative transformation of services to the public, we are striving to improve the overall quality of life in the cities.