On 3 December 2024, a press conference was held at Saronno City Hall to present the ‘Smart Land Saronnese’ integrated territorial project. Saronno, Caronno Pertusella, Gerenzano and Turate are the four Municipalities that have signed the public-private partnership aimed at setting up the territory’s development strategy which, through a series of infrastructural interventions, will be implemented thanks to a range of funding that will be raised over the next few years by a private Advisor.
For several years now there has been a recurring criticality for most Italian Municipalities: in order to meet the needs of citizens, territories need adequate infrastructure and services, but what local Administrations lack is the ability to make investments autonomously due to increasingly scarce budgets and technical staff overburdened by the many tasks that are essential to ensure good city government. It is in response to this critical situation that in 2022 the Municipalities of Caronno Pertusella, Gerenzano and Turate, led by the Municipality of Saronno, came together to start a unitary process aimed at building a vision of sustainable supra-territorial development that looks to the long term.
The needs and desires collected were then grouped into six strategic guidelines, consistent with European directives: Green, Mobility, Urban Regeneration, Public Infrastructure, Digital Transition and Energy Transition. With an estimated investment of 225 million euros, the objective of the public-private partnership in which we at CISA also play a leading role is precisely that of finding, over a period of 9 years, those economic resources by identifying them from a series of regional, national, European and private sources and, subsequently, reporting on those projects that have been financed.
The four Mayors present expressed their enthusiasm for this collaboration because together they are looking towards an innovative and eco-sustainable future, because they wanted to work on a broader territory than a single Municipality, because they have chosen a path that goes beyond the mere political mandates of the current Administrations and because, thanks to the intervention of a private Advisor, they will be able to intercept important funding that otherwise they would not have been able to seize on their own.
Enzo Viganò, Chairman of CISA, concludes: ‘We express our satisfaction for this achievement because it makes us realise that our activity was not only material, aimed at bringing a result, but because it also left something more. It is the territory, in fact, that has decided to unite to achieve, in a cohesive manner, a goal that is not immediate but will be achieved over time and with work. Now the most difficult part begins, the operational part, to get the projects on the ground, so everyone’s help will be needed.’
