Planning Interpretations for Peri-urban Landscapes

The infinite, uncontrolled, and uncontrollable growth of cities may have a short future, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe. This is not only due to prohibitions built into legislative measures, which are finally flourishing after about twenty years of scientific and technical debate on the need to halt the consumption of new agricultural land and to stem urban expansion; it is especially due to new practices for requalifying existing settlements layouts and improving the landscape. For a long time, responses and planning proposals have been lacking due to the absence of general policies capable of uniting new ethics of sustainable development with contemporary values, needs, and lifestyles, and above all with the demand for a better quality of life in our cities. New planning dynamics take their steps from periurban areas, ever more extensive, scattered, and unrecognizable, which have suffered these distortions the most and risk sinking into anonymity.