Ville méditerranéenne et biorégion urbaine Un nouveau « pacte ville-campagne » pour la reconquête des valeurs de proximité et le développement local.

Proximity issues and relationships represent an outstanding feature of European Mediterranean cities in their historical evolution. This characteristic has been significantly compromised in modernity. Mediterranean cities are drawn into the global space of flows –not only informative but also related to matter and energy. They appear to be hyper-specialized, fragmented, physically scattered in some new “periruban” domain and progressively detached from their embedding territory, weakened as regards the complex set of physical proximity relationships –environmental, functional and social, infra and extra-urban. Moving from such premises, the article analyses the urban bioregion model –conceived as a co-evolutionary system between nature and culture– as a possible paradigm to guide an integrated process of “relocalization” of urban organization, especially in terms of strengthened economic, physical and energy proximity relationships following a new “city-backcountry pact”. The case study of the Florence-Prato metropolitan area in Tuscany, is a potential specific application of the urban bioregion model with the aim of pursuing both urban regeneration and local development jointly with a new sustainable urban form. This through the shared definition of a strategic scenario for an “agricultural multifunctional park” and a first “short supply chain” initiative towards the implementation of a local agri-food system (LFS).