Babel’s Limits. Lexical Forms and Urban Planning Content

Abstract

The forms of language give a glimpse of urban planning policies. Clear language, without demagogic proclamations, generates a suitable platform to translate urban planning strategies into concrete actions. A discretional language with multiple meanings and modalities to affect territorial governance can produce unexpected results. The Reform of Title V of Italian Constitution has divided up regional languages within a national legislative framework that still has a reconstructive imprint. Land governance is changing within international attention focused on caring environmental values. After decades of constraints, first in order to protect cultural-environmental assets, then to stop their destruction, national regulations ask to facilitate development. In answering this need, region councils invent new lexicons and new meanings, according local planning history. This paper attempts to set up a regional lexicons synoptic framework in order to point out risk of fragmenting spatial planning role into a complex of partial perspectives, as well as a need to reflect on territorial and environmental values interpretation codes.