Phase 2.1: New urban centers within the territory of the Unions

The criterion has already been stated: the center is the most accessible place, not the largest town. What matters here is how it is applied, because it is the step where a correct choice on paper becomes a wrong choice in fact.

Accessibility is measured in minutes, not kilometers. Two towns eight kilometers apart can be ten or thirty-five minutes away, depending on whether there is a direct road or a long detour. And it is measured when people actually move: a weekday morning in November, not an August afternoon. Half of the wrong decisions come from a distance read on a map.

The right place is almost always visible. There is no need to invent it: there is a town where local people go anyway, for high school, for the doctor, for shopping, for the train. Those habits are worth more than any calculation, because they say where the territory has already decided to go.

The criterion is established before the names. It is the delicate point of the entire phase: as long as we reason about parameters, the discussion is technical; as soon as the names of the towns are on the table, every criterion becomes a weapon to support one's own. Writing it down beforehand is the only way for the decision not to be taken by the bell tower.

And there is someone else's decision that constrains this. While the Union chooses its own center, the Region is deciding where to locate the Community House of the same area: the hub where socio-sanitary services are in one place. These are two choices with the same criterion, made by two tables that often do not speak to each other. If the center of communal services is born in one town and the health hub in the next one, the sense of both is lost. Before choosing, you need to know where the other is going.