Last update: 26/01/2007

Planning and management

Enormous changes taking place in the economic and production systems and contemporary dynamics relative to deterritorialization processes are radically transforming the way we live and its implications. This gives rise to major environmental problems requiring the development of new strategic models of territorial organisation and of integrated projects, capable of involving and optimising the different territorial resources.
In order to organise and manage the territorial opportunity recomposition process in a coherent and shared manner it will be necessary to overcome the specialistic separation of knowledge and acquire new forms of professionalism. This need is strongly expressed in the Code of cultural and landscape heritage which intends to abandon the narrow specific vision relative to each subject in favour of an open dialogue between all the subjects who will work together to transform the territory, changing its physical, production and settlement structure. The integration of ecological and landscape protection needs in territorial planning and management proposes is one of the themes of general interest that is all too frequently neglected by the development policies.
The ability to guarantee the improvement of ecological performance combined with the possibility of creating places of collective identification can only exist if the concept of landscape is associated with the idea of a result of all the natural and anthropic processes taking place in the complex mosaic of ecosystems.
This hypothesis was unanimously recognised in the text relative to the European Landscape Convention, a document that finally lays down a unanimous definition of landscape as the expression of the diversity of the cultural and economic heritage of populations and the foundation of their cultural identity.
To this end the contribution of Landscape Ecology can be of great help. It is capable of contemporaneously studying the characteristics of natural and artificial ecosystems as parts of a single diversified system, favouring the balance of functions in a perspective of sustainable development. Regardless of the scale of measures proposed, a correct, effective planning hypothesis must consider the protection of the cultural-beauty resources of the territory, as well as the opportunities of social, economic and cultural promotion, in a harmonious relationship with the concept of save-guarding natural resources. By adopting an approach of this scope we can guarantee the protection of biodiversity, on various levels, and promote and develop the environments characterised by natural and cultural values, contributing at the same time to the re-establishment – also by means of new forms of know-how and communication techniques – of a relationship of fertile interaction with places.
The commitments assumed for the adjustment to criteria expressed at European level will involve the commitment to the implementation of proposals intended to integrate the ecological-landscaping dimension into sector policies.