Common Property in Italy. Unresolved Issues and an Appraisal Approach: Towards a Definition of Environmental-Economic Civic Value
Abstract
:1. Introduction
- Civic uses are widespread: Land encumbered in the past by civic uses (and still encumbered today) accounts for about 3 million hectares (30,000 sq. km) in Italy, roughly 10% of Italian territory [5];
- As of 2022, neither legislation nor Constitutional Court rulings have explicitly clarified the legal status of civic uses. The Constitutional Court rulings have done little more than establish the legal regime to be applied to civic uses: Land encumbered by civic uses cannot be sold, nor can it be subjected to prescription or usucapion (except for limited cases involving privately owned land), nor can the use of such land be changed, which means land use is limited to agro-forestry-pastoral activities;
- Administrative difficulties have developed over time, partly because of the factors listed above and partly because most civic uses emerged through de facto behavior, without any formal procedures that would have provided them with appropriate publicity. There are no national or regional public registries and simple, reliable, accurate procedures for verifying civic use entitlements do not exist (at present, the only sources with legal certainty are the rulings made by regional commissioners in litigation regarding civic uses). In other words, civic use has been managed in a rather haphazard manner, and as a result, there are many examples of circumstances in blatant contrast with the characteristics of civic use (subdivisions, land released from its civic use encumbrance on the basis of Regional Laws that were later declared unconstitutional, land destined for civic use transformed into urban and/or built-up areas, etc.);
- It is estimated that there are several million buildings, nearly all of them unregistered, on land encumbered by civic use.
- These conditions, characteristic of land encumbered by civic uses in Italy, have led to problems over time:
- The transfer of legally constructed buildings (those built before 1967) and the implementation of measures designed over time to foster and facilitate building work on architectural heritage (e.g., special building law and tax bonuses) are both restricted/prohibited.
- There is only limited recourse for the special laws dealing with building amnesties, especially Laws 724/1994 and 326/2003.
- Agro-forestry-pastoral functions have been seriously compromised by urbanization processes that have already been implemented or are currently in progress.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Common Property in the European Union
- Primary commons (cooperative self-managed property);
- Extended commons (collective property linking primary commons);
- Restricted commons (compatible with capitalism);
- Aspirational-prefigurative commons (limited but challenging capitalism).
2.2. Common Property, Civic Use in Italy: A Legislative Review
- must have irreversibly lost its physical conformation or agro-forestry-grazing function and this transformation must have taken place before Law 431/1985 came into effect and any works carried out must have been authorized by the municipal administration;
- must have been used in compliance with current urban planning measures;
- must not have been transformed without the appropriate landscape authorizations and these authorizations must have been complied with.
2.3. Methods for Assessing Environmental Value
3. Results
3.1. Economic–Environmental Civic Value
- direct use value, related to the value of agricultural, pastoral or forestry production;
- indirect use value, related to the indirectly usable environmental benefits (the positive effects of the agro-forestry-pastoral use destination on the environment);
- option value, related to the availability of the resource for further future collective uses (also associated with new civic values, for example usability of the resource, etc.).
3.2. Evaluating Environmental-Economic Civic Value
3.2.1. Direct Use Value
- without considering the merits of legal disquisitions on the validity of building permits and/or planning provisions on land encumbered by civic use,
- leaving aside considerations regarding the landscape protection of these areas, in view of the complexity of the legal aspects of these matters,
- focusing only on the validity of the administrative act that “sanctions” a building right or “legitimizes” a construction;
3.2.2. Indirect Use Value
- the open-ended technique, where the interviewees are directly asked to express their WTP/WTA for hypothetical changes to the initial situation.
- the iterative bidding game technique, where the interviewer makes a series of offers to the interviewees to try and make them reveal their maximum WTP or their minimum WTA [52];
- the payment card technique where the interviewee is shown a card that lists a series of values that individuals would be willing to pay and has to choose one of these values. This is very similar to the open-ended technique, except that in this case more information is provided to the interviewee [53];
- the contingent ranking technique: interviewees are not asked to directly express a value judgment, but rather to express their degree of preference by classifying in ascending or descending order a set made up of both market goods and priceless assets. The economic value of the priceless asset is then estimated through a statistical inference with the prices of market goods based on the preference rankings;
3.2.3. Option Value
3.2.4. Dimensional Verification
3.3. Taxonomy of Civic Use Situations and Related EECV Estimation Procedures
- land encumbered by civic use that still maintains the possibility of civic use; the conditions for exchange pursuant to Law 168/2017 art. 3 sub-par 8a do not apply to this category;
- land encumbered by civic use that has lost its agro-forestry-pastoral vocation; the conditions for exchange pursuant to Law 168/2017 art. 3 sub-par. 8a can be applied;
- land encumbered by civic use that is a hybrid of the above two cases.
3.3.1. Land Encumbered by Civic Use That Maintains the Possibility of Civic Use
3.3.2. Lands Encumbered by Civic Use That Have Now Lost Their Agro-Forestry-Pastoral Vocation
3.3.3. Land Encumbered by Civic Uses, in a Hybrid Situation That Has Aspects of Categories 1 and 2
4. Discussion and Conclusions
- The method proposed for determining the EECV complies with the objectives that formed the philosophical basis of civic uses as invoked by Law 168/2017 and numerous judgments of the Constitutional Court; civic uses are considered for the role they play in the life and development of local communities, in the conservation and enhancement of the natural and cultural heritage as stable components of the environmental system and of the historical territorial institutions to which they belong, in the ecological conservation of the national agro-forestry-pastoral landscape, and as a source of renewable resources to be exploited and used for the benefit of local communities. This philosophical basis was developed as an expression of three values incorporated within the EECV: Direct use value, an expression of the economic aspect of an asset—land—in relation to the direct utility of the land deriving from its “natural vocation” (agro-forestry-pastoral functions); indirect use value, associated with the benefits that the maintenance of the agro-forestry-pastoral function provides to the area in question; option value, where the economic aspects associated with the use of the area are analyzed using a concept similar to territorial endowment, i.e., the land is considered to be a provider of services deemed essential for citizenship rights, and the valuation assesses whether high-quality levels of service are effectively achieved.
- The various methodologies and evaluation procedures, found in the scientific literature and used for evaluating the TEV, appear to be suitable for evaluating the EECV as well. However, the potential problem associated with implementing the CVM, given that the valuations take place within a context of “exchange”, suggests that a non-monetary performance equivalent between “take-off” and “landing” areas, adopting MCDA or a checklist, can be effectively used to verify the equivalence of the environmental value, the EECV, referred to in Law 168/2018, art. 3, subparagraph 8b. In any case, the monetary estimate of the direct use value component of the EECV appears essential.
- The option value allows us to take into account the qualitative and effectively usable component of the civic good, because its purpose is to consider the “new additional objectives” associated with accessibility, walkability, and signage, as well as devices for enjoying environmental qualities, which are believed to belong to the “environmental” component of civic use to which the regulatory innovations of 2021 refer. This introduces a different parameter to the evaluation that is linked less to the value per se of the land encumbered by civic use and more to this land’s potential use as a collective right. Therefore, the profile that appears to be of greatest interest is access the land, which, through specific devices, must be available to all those who have an interest in it, but, at the same time, this access must be regulated to ensure the land is preserved for the future [63,64].
- This point raises the issue of civic use management in the future: It will be organized using specific plans, as is already the case today for UNESCO assets [65] or Natura 2000 sites [66] (Sites of Community Importance and Special Protection Areas). These plans could take the form of territorial governance instruments, which would ensure not only the protection but also the enhancement and coherent management of civic uses.
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Conflicts of Interest
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EECV | Methodologies/Appropriate Evaluation Procedures | Categories of Encumbered Land That Can Be Exchanged |
---|---|---|
Direct use value (potential, associated with agro-forestry-pastoral functions) | Farming land value or evaluation of grazing land or land capital + forest + stand; | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d; 3.a |
AAV | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d; 3.a | |
Indirect use value (potential, associated with environmental benefits deriving from the agro-forestry-pastoral function) | Monetary: CVM | 2.b; 2.c; 2.d; 3.a |
Monetary: Income approach | 2.b; 2.c; 2.d; 3.a | |
Non monetary: MCDA | 2.b; 2.c; 2.d; 3.a | |
Non monetary: Checklist | 2.b; 2.c; 2.d; 3.a | |
Indirect use value (potential, associated with environmental benefits deriving from the use of new functions introduced to the encumbered land) | Monetary: CVM | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d |
Monetary: Income approach | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d | |
Non monetary: MCDA | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d | |
Non monetary: Checklist | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d | |
Option value (the possible use of a resource in the future, whilst maintaining agro-forestry-pastoral functions) | Monetary: CVM | 2.b; 2.c; 2.d; 3.a |
Non monetary: MCDA | 2.b; 2.c; 2.d; 3.a | |
Non monetary: Checklist | 2.b; 2.c; 2.d; 3.a | |
Option value (the possible use of a resource in the future with the introduction of new functions) | Monetary: Income approach | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d |
Monetary: CVM | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d | |
Non monetary: MCDA | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d | |
Non monetary: Checklist | 2.a; 2.b; 2.c; 2.d |
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Battisti, F.; Pisano, C. Common Property in Italy. Unresolved Issues and an Appraisal Approach: Towards a Definition of Environmental-Economic Civic Value. Land 2022, 11, 1927. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11111927
Battisti F, Pisano C. Common Property in Italy. Unresolved Issues and an Appraisal Approach: Towards a Definition of Environmental-Economic Civic Value. Land. 2022; 11(11):1927. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11111927
Chicago/Turabian StyleBattisti, Fabrizio, and Carlo Pisano. 2022. "Common Property in Italy. Unresolved Issues and an Appraisal Approach: Towards a Definition of Environmental-Economic Civic Value" Land 11, no. 11: 1927. https://doi.org/10.3390/land11111927