Novara Green Flash plan (RA VE),born out of the useful cooperation between public and private sectors ,is aimed at improving the environmental and social quality of the city life through the consolidation of a slow traffic system and ecological means of transport and through a door to door separate refuse collection.

The term ”Green Flash” identifies the selected testing area where the slow traffic system will be carried out. This system is expected to cope with the traffic jams in the urban area and in the outskirts and to change life habits positively facilitating regained free time and business social relations. The innovative feature of the plan, highly appreciated in Europe where it has been rewarded with financing as part of LIFE III Environment, lies in the strong collaboration with Local Agenda 21 in the scheduled operations in the PRUSST and in Novara overall urban planning regulations that are being revised as a mark of the value of the already approved urban and suburban planning.

Therefore, this initiative successfully fits the wide range of operations already resolved by the town administration and financially supported even thanks to national resources geared to change the infrastructural characteristic of the territory to cope with the urban decay and at the same time to improve the socio-environmental process.

Moreover, the plan encourages a great involvement of the whole town to sensitize public awareness of the environmental issue and make the town active and responsible for its actions and behaviours. Hence the idea of assuring the widest and clearest diffusion to all the initiatives promoted in the plan to make it recognizable and above all to make the philosophy behind it really popular.

Therefore, each document, leaflet and space will be marked with a logo that has already become the mascot of everyone who has been involved in the activities for about two months. The logo will become the mascot of citizens, children, old people as well as of traders and tourists. The small snail bearing our town emblem implies not only the idea of slow traffic system but at the same time it reminds of the warning regarding the steps to be taken by everybody next months. Here “Va-lentina” is. Thanks to the helpful contribution of skilled administrators, town planners, architects and local consultants a new course has been taken aimed at providing an innovative contribution to solve the problem of urban traffic jams and at the same time to promote a new philosophy in the citizens'life habits.

The opportunity that this urban, social and economic process will be shared by Novara and other important Italian and European cities is really meaningful as Europe is expected to support the preservation of urban settings, the protection of public welfare and the rediscovery of places bound to be lost.