Convention travel, recovery of cultural goods, new productive installation in strategic areas: Pisa can count on a lot of potential towards the territory’s economic development and to strengthen its position in the coastal area of Tuscany. Many of the Public Administration’s efforts and projects to increase the value of the available assets and attract new national and international investments develop along these three lines.
The first high potential sector is the convention tourism that in recent years has been showing a strong evolution in the Pisa area, which can count on the right ingredients for a further development: three high-level university systems (University of Pisa, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna and Scuola Superiore Normale) for a total of 52,000 students and approximately 2,000 researchers; the Centro Nazionale delle Ricerche [National Research Center] institutes, with over 1,000 workers; and strategic infrastructures, starting with the Galileo Galilei airport, with regular connections to the principal Italian and European destinations. With these strong premises, the Region of Tuscany has financed a feasibility study for the construction of a “Cittadella aeroportuale”, an expo-convention village with a convention center in an area next to the airport and a considerable offer of receptive structures and services. The new hub will also be able to access the rapid airport-city connection through an automated rail shuttle currently under construction.
Recovering the city’s architectural and historical beauties is a both a service to the citizens as well as a way to open new touristic, cultural, and productive opportunities – one of the Municipality of Pisa’s short-term “musts”. In recent years, through the use of the Integrated Plans for Sustainable Urban Development, financed with community, national, and regional funds, cultural assets in precarious conditions were restored and are now ready to be made available for new initiatives. The works to complete the restoration of the medieval city walls, a monument of historical appeal open a novella pathway to cross the city, will eb completed within a few months. Additional interventions concern the restoration of the Arsenali della Repubblica and Torre Guelfa. These assets – as was the case for the Cittadella Galileiana, the former area for public slaughterhouses that will become a center for scientific pedagogy – require a post-restoration value increase and a development in terms of touristic, commercial, and cultural development that will be entrusted to a third-party manager. The municipal administrations’ goal is to proceed with a public tender by the end of the year.
Pisa’s third card pertains to productive activities. The Montacchiello hub is an important asset that is already operational – an industrial areas spanning more than 350,000 sq m designed to favor new installations of a technological, management, manufacturing or commercial nature, and which already hosts approximately 50 businesses. Other high-potential areas include the Ospedaletto area south of the urban center and Navicelli (the channel that connects Pisa to the Port of Livorno): the restoration and revival of real-estate assets zoned for productive purposes could represent an opportunity for businesses and investors who are looking to establish themselves on the territory.
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