Ecosystem Services, Green Infrastructure and Spatial Planning

National governments hardly identify their ecological networks or make an effort to integrate them into their spatial policies and plans. Under this perspective, an important scientific and technical issue is to focus on preserving corridors for enabling species mobility and on achieving connectivity between natural protected areas. This Special Issue takes a step forward insofar as it aims at proposing a theoretical and methodological discussion on the definition and implementation of ecological networks that provide a wide range of ecosystem services

Ecosystem Services, Green Infrastructure and Spatial Planning

Ecosystem services and green infrastructure do not appear to inform spatial policies and plans. National governments hardly identify their ecological networks or make an effort to integrate them into their spatial policies and plans. Under this perspective, an important scientific and technical issue is to focus on preserving corridors for enabling species mobility and on achieving connectivity between natural protected areas. In this respect, this Special Issue takes a step forward insofar as it aims at proposing a theoretical and methodological discussion on the definition and implementation of ecological networks that, besides guaranteeing wildlife movements, also provide a wide range of ecosystem services. The social and economic profile of this question is also relevant since in the long run, savings in public spending (e.g., due to the reduced need for grey infrastructures aiming at contrasting soil erosion or at managing flood risk), savings in private spending (e.g., on water treatment costs) and the potential creation of green jobs are foreseeable. Moreover, indirect and less easily quantifiable social and health benefits (e.g., due to improved natural pollution abatement) are likely to occur as well

Ecology-based planning. Italian and French experimentations

This paper examines some French and Italian experimentations of green infrastructures’ (GI) construction in relation to their techniques and methodologies. The construction of a multifunctional green infrastructure can lead to the generation of a number of relevant bene fi ts able to face the increasing challenges of climate change and resilience (for example, social, ecological and environmental through the recognition of the concept of ecosystem services) and could ease the achievement of a performance-based approach. This approach, differently from the traditional prescriptive one, helps to attain a better and more fl exible land-use integration. In both countries, GI play an important role in contrasting land take and, for their adaptive and cross-scale nature, they help to generate a res ilient approach to urban plans and projects. Due to their fl exible and site-based nature, GI can be adapted, even if through different methodologies and approaches, both to urban and extra-urban contexts. On one hand, France, through its strong national policy on ecological networks, recognizes them as one of the major planning strategies toward a more sustainable development of territories; on the other hand, Italy has no national policy and Regions still have a hard time integrating them in already existing planning tools. In this perspective, Italian experimentations on GI construction appear to be a simple and sporadic add-on of urban and regional plans

Green Infrastructure and Slow Tourism: A Methodological Approach for Mining Heritage Accessibility in the Sulcis-Iglesiente Bioregion (Sardinia, Italy)

In European countries many measures are carried out to improve the disadvantaged conditions and socio-economic marginality of rural areas in comparison with central places. These conditions also affect the quality of travel for visitors and tourists. Therefore, in response to a ‘new’ tourist demand, motivated also by the restrictions following the spread of the COVID-19 virus in recent years, the institutions and the different local actors are working more incisively to improve rural areas. The rural tourism services offer, combined with the Green Infrastructure (GI) project, at different scales—from local to regional—interesting territorial development strategies to achieve the Agenda 2030 objectives. This contribution considers the Sulcis-Iglesiente-Guspinese area, in the Sardinia Region (IT), as a case study. In this area, the landscape context is marked by past mining activity, and the project of a path of historical, cultural, and religious values has proven to be an activator of regenerative processes, in environmental, social, and economic terms. The present study proposes a methodological approach to develop an index (FI—feasibility index) to assess the feasibility of the Stop Places (SPs) project along a horse trail to integrate the current slow mobility of bicycles and pedestrians in the bioregion

Mind the Gap: Why the Landscape Planning System in Sardinia Does Not Work

In Italy, after the introduction of the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape in 2004, the Regional Landscape Plan (RLP) has acquired a coordination role in the urban planning system, for the implementation of policies for landscape protection and valorisation. The case study of the RLP of Sardinia is a paradigmatic application to the coastal area of the island, which is considered most vulnerable and subject to settlement pressure. The objectives of preservation and valorisation of the territorial resources should be transferred into local planning instruments by adopting strategies aimed at the preservation of the consolidated urban fabric, at the requalification and completion of the existing built‐up areas according to the principles of land take limitation and increase in urban quality. The paper investigates the state of implementation and the level of integration of landscape contents in the local plans that have been adapted to the RLP, using a qualitative comparative method. In addition, the results of the plan coherence checks, elaborated by the regional monitoring bodies after the adaptation process, have been analysed to identify the common criticalities and weaknesses. The results highlight the lack of effectiveness of the RLP, after more than a decade since its approval, considering the limited number of adequate local plans and the poor quality of their analytical and regulative contents in terms of landscape protection and valorisation. Conclusions suggest some possible ways to revise the RLP, focusing on the participation of local communities and the development of a new landscape culture

The role of alternative food networks in agricultural landscape conservation: some evidences from Italy and Spain

Drawing on the vast literature about Alternative Food Networks (AFNs) and by utilizing the concepts of social, spatial and ecological embeddedness, this thesis studies the driving forces boosting the AFN farmers’ behaviours in the Community of Madrid and the AFN and conventional farmers in Sardinia, as well as the promotion of AFN practices within the rural parks of Rivas-Vaciamadrid (Spain) and Milan (Italy). The aim is to discover if, and to what extent, landscape and environmental protection goals are embedded in individual AFN and conventional practices, and how practices are promoted in spatial planning projects regarding alternative forms of production. The case studies are based on the qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews: 13 producers in Spain and 25 in Sardinia (including organic and conventional ones), and on the analysis of websites promoting farms belonging to the Soto del Grillo agro-ecological Park in Rivas-Vaciamadrid (7 websites) and the Parco Agricolo Sud in Milan (14 websites). Within the Grounded Theory (GT) framework, codification and saturation methods have been chosen to analyse texts and to determine the sample size. Sampling has been conducted by the non-statistic snowball sampling technique. Codification method allows deeply analysing textual contents and to build a theoretical model describing the case study, by disassembling texts into basic ideas and reassembling them in more general categories. The relationship among categories forms the final theory or model. In the study, the behaviours of Spanish and Sardinian farmers are described through “embeddedness styles” characterised by the way in which categories interplay. In both the case studies, economy and ecology play a different balance within the behaviours, completed by other categories that influence farmers’ insights and practices. Every producer has been included just in one category according to her/his main preference, which does not imply the absence of a positive attitude towards other categories. Websites contents have been analysed by drawing on geographical lores (or knowledges), which have been modified in order to adapt them to the case studies. Geographical lores allow classifying promotional material contents according to the concept of displacement, describing which type of information is used to influence purchasing decisions. Finally, a questionnaire based on the values promoted by the two rural parks has been provided to seven of the 18 Sardinian farmers, in order to discover their attitude towards planning regulations and restrictions related to rural development, rural landscape preservation and environmental protection. Results show how the three types of embeddedness (spatial, ecological and social) work in forming the farmers’ behaviours, and if and to what extent these are influenced by the territorial context where farmers live and work, as for example in the case of the Soto del Grillo Park in the Spanish case. Geographical lores from the websites stress the way of promoting the farms and the agricultural activities, indicating which values are considered more useful to influence consumers’ decisions

Addressing Peripherality in Italy: A Critical Comparison between Inner Areas and Territorial Capital-Based Evaluations

As highlighted by the UN 2030 Agenda, sustainable development is a complex and multidimensional issue that can be effectively implemented and reached at the local level. This implies the evaluation of differences and disparities between territories in order to define local priorities and support cohesion policy objectives. This need has been addressed by the Italian "National Strategy for Inner Areas", which aims to support the growth of territories with a continuous economic and population decline. However, Inner Areas are identified by a set of indicators related to the low accessibility to Services of General Interest, neglecting other important factors that contribute to this condition. This paper proposes a critical analysis of this measurement and of the related "territorialization" of Inner Areas, by introducing a more comprehensive assessment model based on the concept of Territorial Capital (TC), which highlights a more nuanced understanding of complexities and diversities related to the potential development of a territory. In particular, the proposed model evaluates eight TC dimensions (human, social, cognitive, infrastructural, productive, relational, environmental and settlement capital), which cover a broad spectrum of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In order to accurately demonstrate the differences between the results of the two evaluation methods, this paper presents the results of a case study application concerning all 377 municipalities, which compose the Autonomous Region of Sardinia (Italy). The findings of this study confirm the potential of an approach based on the Territorial Capital for place-based policymaking. TC, in fact, can become relevant for defining local priorities and supporting complex decisions, allowing governments to better design and tailor interventions for the effective and efficient management of available resources. Furthermore, these results pose new questions for future research developments in the field of sustainable and equitable development

Collaboration in Planning: the Geodesign approach

After proposing Geodesign as a novel approach to spatial planning and design, the paper presents the workflow and the results of a collaborative Geodesign workshop held in May 2016 to design the future development plan of the Cagliari Metropolitan Area in Italy. The workshop results demonstrate how it is possible to involve teams of members of the community in what is perhaps the most critical (and least understood in its dynamics) phase of a spatial planning process, that is putting knowledge into action through the design of future change alternatives. The participatory creation of design alternative is explained with reference to the case study, as well as the negotiation process which through impact assessment converges towards consensus on a final design solution