Toscana Diffusa: integrating policies for balanced territorial development in Tuscany, Italy

Tuscany has around 3.7 million inhabitants, with rural areas covering much of the territory beyond its main urban and coastal centres. These areas hold significant environmental, cultural and landscape assets, but face challenges related to demographic change, accessibility and service provision. Addressing these challenges often requires combining CAP, cohesion policy, national and regional funding that would otherwise operate through separate sectoral and administrative frameworks.

Toscana Diffusa builds on Tuscany's long experience of integrated territorial governance and provides a common framework for coordinating these instruments around territorial needs. 

Toscana Diffusa provides a common strategic framework through which different regional policies and funding instruments can contribute to shared territorial development objectives. Rather than establishing a dedicated fund, it aligns existing European, national and regional resources through a coordination mechanism based on multi-level cooperation between regional institutions, municipalities, local partnerships and civil society.

The framework allows flexible territorial perimeters to be adapted according to technical criteria including population density, peripherality and geomorphological constraints. This enables interventions to respond to changing territorial conditions rather than relying exclusively on fixed administrative classifications.

Actions are organised around four thematic clusters, reflecting the multi-dimensional nature of territorial development:

Existing policy instruments can be mobilised through tools such as selection criteria incorporated into general funding calls, compensatory or fiscal measures, and shared multi-level projects.  

A key feature is the decision to coordinate existing instruments rather than create a new fund. This enables different funding streams and sectoral policies to contribute to shared territorial objectives while retaining their respective structures.

Tuscany's long-standing experience of integrated territorial governance has also been important. Since the decentralisation reforms of the 1970s, the region has experimented with Territorial Pacts, integrated regional programming and integrated territorial programmes. This has helped build administrative experience, partnerships and a culture of inter-institutional cooperation on which Toscana Diffusa can draw.

Another important feature is the use of flexible territorial perimeters. Updating boundaries according to technical criteria allows interventions to respond to changing demographic and territorial conditions.

Finally, codifying the approach through regional legislation provides a stable institutional framework, while flexible territorial boundaries, thematic clusters and implementation tools allow interventions to be adapted to different territorial needs. The experience highlights the importance of local actors, established partnerships, administrative capacity and regional coordination in translating multiple policy instruments into coherent place-based approaches.