Lorenzo de’ Medici Press

Firenze - via Faenza 34

2018 - ISBN 978-88-99838-52-2

Edited by Patrizia Tassinari and Daniele Torreggiani

Scientific Committee

Patrizia Tassinari, University of Bologna

Juan Manuel Palerm Salazar, Uniscape President

Tessa Matteini, Uniscape Director

Daniele Torreggiani, University of Bologna

Danilo Monarca, Tuscia University

Giacomo Scarascia Mugnozza, University of Bari

Riccardo Fichera, University of Reggio Calabria

Alessandro Toccolini, University of Milan

Giovanni Cascone, University of Catania

Riccardo Gulli, University of Bologna

Simona Tondelli, University of Bologna

Anna Letizia Monti, Italian Association of Landscape architecture (AIAPP, member of IFLA – International Federation

of Landscape Architects)

Benedict W. Wheeler, European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School

David Miller, James Hutton Institute

Roderick Drew, President of the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS)

Christine Fürst, President of the International Association for Landscape Ecology (IALE)

Tadeusz Juliszewski, President of International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR)

Shelley Egoz, Centre for Landscape Democracy (CLaD), Norwegian University of Life Sciences

Andrea Sisti, President of the World Association of Agronomists, President of CONAF

Alessandro Marata, National council of architects, planners, landscape architects and conservators, Coordinator of the Environment, Energy and Sustainability Department

Srdan Matic, Coordinator, Policy and Governance for Health and Well-being, World Health Organization - Regional Office for Europe, European Centre for Environment and Health

Index

INTRODUCTION, Patrizia Tassinari, Daniele Torreggiani

June 6

University of Bologna,
Aula Giorgio Prodi (Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2, Bologna)

SESSION I – Healthy landscapes: projects and impacts

Keynote lectures

Living in the landscape: health as a project, JuanManuel Palerm

Urban green space interventions and health, a review of impacts and effectiveness, Srdan Matic

Welfare landscapes revisited: Legacy and possible futures of green open spaces in Danish post-war social housing estates, Anne Tietjen

SESSION II – Healthy landscapes, healthy societies

Invited lectures

Landscape and Social Sustainability as indicators for a healthy society, Shelley Egoz

Gardens for seniors: relationship between the gardens characteristics and their usage in a pilot study in 3 Italian nursing homes, Giulio Senes, Natalia Fumagalli, Cristina Ferrara

Oral presentations

Innovative and cross-cutting urban strategies for well-being The renovation of public spaces in the widespread areas of Sapienza University in Rome, Alessandra Capuano

All about the ‘wow factor’? The relationships between aesthetics, restorative effect and perceived biodiversity in designed urban planting, Helen Hoyle, James Hitchmough, Anna Jorgensen

Peri-urban Green Infrastructure. The overview of recent European studies, Xenia Abramovich

Assessing relevant knowledge related to the types and characteristics of urban green & blue spaces having a significant impact on human mental health and well-being, Maria Beatrice Andreucci, Barbara Livoreil, Agnieszka O. Guizzo, Sjerp de Vries, Annamaria Lammel, Alessio Russo, Liz O’brien, Zoe Davies, Julie Glanville, Hans Keune, Melissa R. Marselle, Roy Remmen, Hanna Wood

A Structured listening method to retrofit an urban park evaluating the urban green system, MariaElena Menconi, David Grohmann

Space to nature. De-sealing policies and Transferable development rights, Fulvio Adobati, Emanuele Garda

Healthy landscape design in the agricultural fringe of the cities, Bruna Di Palma, Maddalena Verrillo

Landscape and Music, Giuseppina La Face

June 7

University of Bologna,
Imola district (Palazzo Sersanti, Piazza Matteotti 8, Imola)

SESSION III – Environmental health and people’s landscapes

Keynote lectures

Healthy people need a sound relationship to landscape, Bas Pedroli

The health benefits of urban green spaces, Andrew Lee

Invited lectures

The evolution of landscapes: The human factor in a transfrontier case study in Karelia (Finland / Russia), Juanjo Galan Vivas, Felix Bourgeau

Living the city-landscape Environmental health, regulation and urban design, Margherita Vanore, Massimo Triches

Radicepura Garden Festival, Fondazione Radicepura

SESSION IV – Built system and urban regeneration

Oral presentations

Integrated planning and design of summer baths (natural baths and natural swimming-pools) in the urban space – potentials for a sustainable urban development, Dr. Christine Fuhrmann

From productive sites to healthy landscape pro-duction, Elisa Baldin

Bringing Health into Housing: A European Approach to the Design of Post-World War II Dwellings in Maryland, Selena Bagnara Milan

Guidelines for Urban and Territorial Regeneration: Landscape Design as a Therapeutic Device, Maria Lodovica Delendi

The Tagus Estuary: from barrier of the river’s edge city towards its strongest binder, Caterina Anastasia

SESSION V – Green systems and wellbeing

Keynote lectures

Are natural environments really good for your health and wellbeing? What does the evidence say, and why do we need it?, Benedict W. Wheeler

Lyon’s “green strategy”, from urban planning to sustainable green spaces conception, Magali Rogel

Invited lectures

Community gardens as healing tools for patients with eating disorders, David Grohmann, Cristian Corvaglia, Maria Elena Menconi

Comparing ecological networks in peri-urban landscapes: an application to Italy, Andrea De Montis, Amedeo Ganciu, Matteo Cabras, Antonietta Bardi, Valentina Peddio, Maurizio Mulas

SESSION VI – Urban planning and health

Oral presentations

Private Green Space in urban housing: How important is it for a sustainable living?, Lei Gao, Katinka H. Evensen, Kostas Mouratidis, Mina De Marino, Grete Patil

Urban regeneration for safer cities: eco-cultural strategies as a tool to enhance urban resilience to risk, Marialuce Stanganelli, Carlo Gerundo

Creating Healthy Landscapes: Urban Strategies to Improve the Quality of Life, Chiara Camaioni, Ilaria Odoguardi

The landscape planning which optimal tool for a healthy landscape, Avv. Prof. Luca Di Giovanni

Landscapes of cohabitation, Claudio Zanirato

Environmental educational potentials in school grounds, Budapest (Hungary), Jákli Eszter

Adaptive design through nature-based technologies and solutions: an innovative process characterising urban regeneration, Maria Beatrice Andreucci, Silvia Coccolo, Dimitra Theochari, Emanuele Naboni

Ergonomic Urbanisms: therapeutic or preventive regeneration process?, Gennaro Rossi

Horticultural therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: a pilot study to evaluate the benefits on stress through salivary cortisol measurement, Natalia Fumagalli, Roberto Rovelli, Gaia Paparella, Giorgia Boscaini, Giulio Senes

June 8

University of Bologna,
Aula Giorgio Prodi (Piazza San Giovanni in Monte 2, Bologna)

SESSION VII – Green, health and education

Keynote lectures

Green Health - Contribution of green and open space in public health and wellbeing, David Miller

Invited lectures

Water, ground and green systems as re-educational factors to the qualitative sustainability, Rita Occhiuto

Regenerating the Barbaña, Ourense’s foundational river, Cristóbal Crespo González, Felipe Peña Pereda, Cristina García Fontán, Emilio Rodríguez Blanco, Juan Ignacio Prieto López, Óscar Pedrós Fernández, Jesús Conde García

SESSION VIII – Green/blue infrastructures and ecosystem services

Oral presentations

Attractive, climate-adapted and sustainable? Public perception of non-native planting in the designed urban landscape, Helen Hoyle, James Hitchmough, Anna Jorgensen

Economic development and biodiversity in new ecosystems, Ceregato Alessandro, Pirazzoli Riccardo

Measuring landscape fragmentation in the European context: a comparative approach, Andrea De Montis, Vittorio Serra, Antonio Ledda

Multilevel Green Governance in Lyon, Anna Laura Palazzo, Maria Beatrice Andreucci

Tourism cycling routes within the national plan for sustainable mobility: an opportunity to improve and develop ‘fair and inclusive well-being’, Maria Rita Schirru

Between nature and artifice. San Rocco Valley in Naples as health landscape, Pasquale Miano, Adriana Bernieri, Francesca Coppolino

Coastal landscape regeneration: a framework from northern Adriatic, Leonardo Filesi, Luisa Cattozzo, Andrea Fiduccia and Leonardo Marotta

Co-benefits of urban green infrastructure: Urban storm water management and public health improvement through landscape design interventions, Bhavna Mishra

The effect of initiatives and community involvements influence on riverside landscape, Takahiro Yamazaki

SESSION IX – Green spaces and health promotion

Keynote lecture

Environment and health promotion in urban area, Ferrante Margherita, Fiore Maria, Antonio Cristaldi, Copat Chiara, Grasso Alfina, Pietro Zuccarello, Oliveri Conti Gea

Invited lectures

The synergy between urban green spaces and a healthy city: state of the art and review of the available literature evidence, Davide Gori

The role of ICT in public open spaces: the Cyber-Cardeto park, Andrea Galli, Ernesto Marcheggiani, Eva Savina Malinverni, Roberto Pierdicca, Carlos Smaniotto Costa

SESSION X – Healthy landscapes and socio-ecological aspects

Oral presentations

River management: an opportunity to implement landscape policies, Romina D’Ascanio, Anna Laura Palazzo, Maria Beatrice Andreucci

Co-designing sustainable energy transition in rural landscapes: reducing carbon footprint and safeguarding landscape democracy and ecosystem services, Paolo Picchi, Davide Geneletti, Simone Verzandvoort, Annemieke Smit, Kees Hendriks, Sven Stremke

Urban regeneration and socio-ecological systems: Rethink purpose through the green infrastructure approach, Maria Beatrice Andreucci, Sergio Malcevschi, Andrea Tartaglia

The Agricultural heritage landscape protection. The FAO GIAHS program, Prof. Mauro Agnoletti

An approach to measure the effect of land management on pollinator communities in the semi-natural habitats of the Pistoia valey, Simone Marini, Anna Camilla Moonen

The design of a Kinder garden green area: from guidelines to executive project, Trondoli Isabella, Minelli Marcella, Giorgioni Maria Eva

New technologies for the landscape setting: immersive views, Gabriele Garnero, Enrico Fabrizio, Valeria Minucciani

Extreme heat events, urban landscape, and human health, Chia-Tsung Yeh, Tsai-Yun Liu

DARDO Working waterlines a new ecological hydraulic inhabitable connection, Michele Ugolini, Stefania Varvaro, Caterina Gallizioli, Lavinia Dondi

Juan Manuel Palerm Salazar, Sketch “Health landscape”, 8 June 2018, Bologna

INTRODUCTION

For the first time in history more than half the world’s population resides in cities, a proportion that is expected to increase to 66 per cent by 2050. While, on the one hand, rural areas are under pressure due to the growth of urban areas, on the other hand, the demand for urban green areas is increasing, as recommended in the international strategic program ‘Healthy Cities’ of the World Health Organization. Prevention and safety in our living environment are the new basis for actions, policies, and projects aimed at promoting landscape quality and urban regeneration.

The ‘Helthy landscape: green, regeneration, safety’ conference, promoted by the University of Bologna and Uniscape, of which the Alma Mater is funding member, aims at addressing the challenge to promote and turn everyday landscapes in healthy places to live, through multidisciplinary subjects and approaches.

The event aims to provide an answer to how open spaces, both in urban and periurban environments, can be an opportunity to increase the wellbeing of citizens, considering environmental and social aspects. A well-structured green, in all its forms and dimensions (such as urban parks, spaces along mobility networks, coastal and riverside areas, private and public green areas, urban gardens, uncultivated areas, fringe areas, etc.) play a key role in environmental regeneration, in combating the threats of biodiversity due to urban fragmentation, changes in land use and biodiversity losses, in reducing the heat island effect and improving the resilience to heat waves, mitigating soil, air and water pollution.

The conference opens a discussion on the wide range of benefits deriving from open spaces and on the interaction that the community has with urban green and blue spaces. Physical and psychological health benefits are associated to urban green areas, for example in relation to cardiovascular health, restorative effects on stress and mental wellbeing, post-operative recovery, and even effects on mortality. However, the impacts and mechanisms that affect well-being in different communities and populations still need to be investigated. A crucial and topical research question is how a configuration of open spaces that re-interprets aesthetics, social, economic and production needs, and environmental characteristics, can trigger a virtuous circle of interactions with effects on physical and psychological health.

Healthy urban conditions should rely on an improvement in the community's awareness of the potentialities that open spaces and natural and man-made resources have on the quality of life, and of the bi-univocal relationship between people and landscape. It is therefore necessary that public policies and cultural attitudes evolve and, where necessary, change, through actions and events also related to educational processes.

Through this event, the University of Bologna and Uniscape aim to collect best practices focusing both on the contact of the communities with the natural biodiversity, and on people’s involvement in the landscape project. On the one hand, the theme of education to biodiversity and to the design of spaces suitable for this purpose, starting from school spaces (gardens and schoolyards), up to public open spaces with different degrees of naturalness (urban parks, rural fringe areas, etc.). Moreover, the communities cannot be recognized only as observers and users. They have an active role both in the project phase and in the care and management of landscapes, green and open spaces. The conference thus opens to international and European conventions and case studies in which all the stakeholders (including neighbors, local authorities, public organizations, private operators), students and scholars, are involved in projects for the re-qualification of open spaces and urban green systems.

Quality, healthy lifestyles, social interaction, healthy opportunities for development, and being restorative, uplifting and healing, are essential principles of urban landscapes in creating healthy places to live. The 'Healthy landscape: green, regeneration, safety' conference takes in careful consideration public policies, green design and governance processes capable of making the city an innovative, competitive and attractive territory, and of preserving and making accessible to the whole community the urban territory and its common goods. In the challenge of promoting and renewing everyday landscapes turning them into healthy places to live, public policies will have to consider the themes of conservation of historical and built heritage and urban regeneration, considering urban voids and brownfields, as well as social integration issues.

Patrizia Tassinari, Daniele Torreggiani

SESSION I
Healthy landscapes: projects and impacts

Living in the landscape: health as a project
Vivir en el paisaje: salud y proyecto

JuanManuel Palerm

University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, UNISCAPE President
Full Professor architectural design and landscape and felow research ULPGC.
e-mail: jpalerm@paltab.com

Key Words:
Environment, landscape and natural space. Landscape Project.
Architectural design and Project in the Landscape (Paisaje)
Life quality, Policy makers, tools
Sustainability life and Landscape Project design.
Natural- artificial Space and landscape

Concept: Reason for the architectural project for health
Motivo per essere del progetto architettonico per la salute
Razón de ser del proyecto de arquitectura para la salud

In the European Landscape Convention (Florence 2000 mentions two phrases of special value for the well-being and quality of life of citizens:

* “The landscape is an important element in the quality of life of populations everywhere: in both urban and rural environments, in degraded spaces and in high quality areas, in spaces of recognized exceptional beauty and in the most common spaces”

* Landscape is a “key element of individual and social well-being”

The application of both texts in the sectorial policies of many European countries shows the need to specify certain concepts:

1.- Environment, Landscape and Natural space are often used indistinctively.

2.- Health Conditions, Quality of Life and Well-being are practiced as POLICIES that aim to PRESERVE certain natural landscapes (urban and rural) recognizing them as “Public Goods” and regulating (Standards) for the use and enjoyment of citizens.

It is therefore convenient to assume Natural Space as Landscape where nature is a central element in the morphological composition of these spaces and in the management of public authorities over them, recognizing their importance for the balance of ecosystems, for the conservation of biodiversity, sustainable development and the welfare of the population, setting limits and establishing standards to regulate its use and exploitation.

Furthermore, it is important to emphasize that the notion of health and quality of life do not necessarily have to coincide or be linked. Although there are different meanings of Health: Health as anemia of symptoms, Health as strength, Health as self-care, Health as well-being or good living (Harmony ...), it does not appear as it is recognized in 1948 by the “WHO” < <A COMPLETE STATE OF GOOD BEING >> not only physical, mental and social but also by the absence of conditions or diseases.

Another consideration and evolution is verified in the Notion of quality of life both in its economic (Welfare) and its psychosocial (Well-Being) implication. For both factors, we have to recognize that there are individuals who, living in conditions of life objectively worse than others, perceive that their quality of life is better and vice versa.

The economy, housing, free time, work, health, family, conjugal relationships, friends, the quality of the environment, contact with nature, in short THE LANDSCAPE in the key of the CEP, possibly builds all of them from a relational system, the synthetic indicator of “Well-being” and of HEALTH.

It is precisely from these reflections on the notion of health and quality of life where the perceived Health is regulated and valued from biological, psychological and social perspectives and where these perspectives appeal to the fields and disciplines Ecological, Morphological and Formal, to offer a relational (theoretical) system that proposes a revision of concepts and relationships between Territory, Environment and Landscape.

This relationship and interaction between territory, environment and landscape is studied and clearly stated in the Canary Islands Manifesto for the European Landscape Project in section 3:

“LANDSCAPE cannot and should not be mistaken for TERRITORY or ENVIRONMENT, nor can the same operational tools be applied to each of these terms.

Territory represents the physical space in which different systems of ecosystems intervene, interact and interrelate. The environment is commonly understood as the set of abiotic and biotic factors in which diverse organisms live, including human beings, and the natural processes that rule over it. Landscape takes into consideration the bonds of interrelationships, independence and temporary evolution of a system of ecosystems. The territory is in fact covered by mosaics of landscapes”.

However, accepting this detailed breakdown of the relationship that we establish between Territory, Environment and Landscape, we must put forward three aspects and fundamental considerations if we intend to suggest The Landscape as a mechanism capable of dialoguing and acting with Health and Quality of Life, which are the following:

1. Acting on landscape implies putting forward a (perceptive, sensorial and existential) interpretation of territory and translating it into a suitably managed project. Acting on the landscape is to work on an artifice in nature, manipulate it for perception or habitat, either for its protection, planning or management. The landscape is not nature, but an active and intentional “look” that avoids the superficial, and therefore empty and hollow, vision of nature, which clouds the true sense of perception, ignoring fundamental relationships (biological, emotional ... ecosystems). The concept of vision and perception is implicit in the term landscape. Landscape has no meaning if no one observes it, contemplates it or, specifically, lives it, beyond the flows, connections and interrelations of nature and its scales of conservation and protection.

2. “The Landscape” allows us to transcend our individuality in a collective commitment and dimension. Enjoying a high quality landscape is a basic human right. Landscape is a resource which can be qualified by adjectives such as natural, tourist, economic, social, cultural, etc. with the subsequent potential for transformation, exploitation and management. And it is precisely in regarding it as an asset that the potential to establish an action and management strategy lies, basing it on the need to interpret landscape and to exchange cultural and daily readings.

Landscape must rethink the dimension of public free space, given that it cannot be understood as “entity” or as “site”, since it is not an object or a fragment of territory endowed with limits and marks that delimit or determine it.. The places of our citizen actions and relations are always more complex due to the superimposition and sedimentation of coherent and incoherent actions over time.

These places are not somewhere where something can happen at any moment, since such a place only exists as long as that something happens and only at the moment it happens. That place is not “a place,” or a “no place,” but a “takes place.” Pure happening. They are sometimes configured as representative landscapes of the community, sometimes as landscapes to be discovered, undefined; scenarios of diffuse contemporary society.

3. Landscape is a primary identity element, essential to a community. The pursuit of this principle of identity is the basic motivation that best explains the concept of landscape.

Landscape simultaneously represents a community’s vision, beliefs and character in relation to its past, present and future. This community may be the passive habitual voice, or the active and anticipating voice of a project. Thus every society adopts its own stance as a contemplative or active agent with regard to landscape; a stance which, in any case, changes constantly given its very physiology.

The cultural dimension of the landscape is a key element in the construction of the collective identity. The landscape is an expression of the forms of coexistence of various cultures and beliefs. Art, by means of its drive to imitate and represent, has shown us how to look at and value scenes of nature, contributing decisively to shaping our concept of landscape through painting, poetry, gardening, etc. and with this offer a imaginary for anew recognize the reality and to be supportable

It is precisely this last point on the ability of the art of reconciling worlds and thoughts that I intend to exemplify as an evocative of the relationship that I make between Health and Landscape / Health and/as a Project.

At present it is really difficult to think or be in one single thing, we are completely precipitated and subjected to many actions and decisions in parallel practically at the same time; so, for example: having only one book on the table is practically impossible, they accumulate, they are usually several and in addition they are usually accompanied by other objects, music, headphones, letters, pending items, coffee cups ... and in turn we listen to music , we eat ... we watch TV, all in a SIMULTANEITY of special and time, as a condition of our daily life, as a “A” ”DE” “EN” of the condition of inhabiting.

This is superbly described by Itziar González Viros:

“Health is a PLACE:” “TO” health is reached; in health you are; from health you leave. Only because we have health do we choose and recognize certain places like those in which we must discern our life.”

Based on these premises, we present a graphic development and images of the spaces of reclusion of artistic creation (studies) in their condition of daily work where “visions merge” that aspire to a phenomenological perception of reality and give the construction of an imaginary set capable of constructing parallel worlds such as Landscapes where people live and err in a continuous action and vital reaction.

This is exactly why we would like to refer to a method, methodology found in these spaces of artistic seclusion and that determines a process and a way of perceiving the world of inhabiting it and feeling in harmony or in contrast with it, I refer to the need to ERR. The error as fortuitous action, a necessary strategy of creativity, is accidental, a matter of chance and causal.

ERRING is a fusion of concatenated and simultaneous temporal visions. So, if I can explain that we have several outstanding books on the table and many other things. Thus, I can reconcile with myself through understanding, accepting and managing this or that Landscape.

In “Más allá del error” (Beyond the error) (2010) Eloy Puig says:

When the artist-programmers are dedicated to “test” or try out a code or the functionality of a particular software, often unexpected uncontrolled elements arise in the results, typical of the testing process, but nevertheless, their consideration as a result of a fortuitous act can be perceived as positive, pleasant and of great suggestive value. Error has become an activity with large doses of experimentality and one that has involved the generation of new methods of work through new media. Experimentation can lead to an error, an unexpected result that will often allow us to generate new ideas and new approaches. The error, the noise, the binary noise (pixilation of the image), the interferences, etc., have come to agglutinate in an aesthetic value within the work process (in the sense of strange and unforeseen results). This widespread use of error is very broad and brings together the most varied typologies of work.

Scientific knowledge has advanced in its discoveries thanks to errors in research laboratories. This is how N. Katharine Hayles puts it, “The ‘accidental’ is not so much a fixed category as the boundary between the known and the unknown, the expected and the unexpected; the “accidental” happens where waves break on the beach of knowledge “ We can arrive at the conclusion that error has been determinant for scientific development, we could deduce it through Robert Youngson’s book “Fiasco! Aprendiendo de los errores de la ciencia (Learning from the errors of science)”. The author shows us how the reflection derived from the study of what is considered an error can be very beneficial. “As the theories more and more fully account for the observed facts, the error factor gradually fades, but is never eliminated ......... ..”

This method as scientific knowledge inspires a conception where The Landscape offers all the naturalness of error and offers us all the naturalness of also finding health from erring.

The following thoughts are both evocative and significant as a conclusion in this context:

Elisée Reclus: The human being is satisfied to find their own footprint in the LANDSCAPE, seeking the hope of a better life in it, a possible UTOPIA.

AMBROGIO LORENZETTI represents this in the frescoes of the Ducal Palace of Siena “Allegories of Good and Bad Government”

Francesco Valleani in his geography of the Mido argues the traumatic loss of the sense of place: from the degradation of the landscape to depressive pathologies

Frances Muñoz: The anti-urban culturalist discourse establishes different classes between nature and culture, between “ruris and urbis” in the landscape.

Health and Landscape, is a continuous, permanent project able to synthesize an experience of life and as well as an aspiration to make our existence bearable.

Urban green space interventions and health,
a review of impacts and effectiveness

Srdan Matic

Coordinator, Policy and Governance for Health and Well-being, World Health Organization - Regional Office for Europe. European Centre for Environment and Health
e-mail: matics@who.int

Abstract

Recent studies have provided evidence of multiple benefits from urban green space, through various mechanisms, and with potentially differential impacts in various populations. Epidemiological studies have used a multitude of approaches to measure the effects of urban green space availability and accessibility on the health outcomes of study participants. Given the potential of urban green spaces to act as settings for health promotion it is therefore necessary to summarize the existing evidence identifying, where possible, the underlying mechanisms contributing to both the negative and positive health outcomes of urban green space. There is also a need to summarize existing understandings of the characteristics of urban green space that may differentially be associated with health outcomes, and to understand how different populations may be affected and benefit in different ways.

Over the past several years, the World Health Organization’s Regional Office for Europe has been looking into the green spaces as health determinants in today’s cities. We reviewed the available evidence and analyzed the policy implications of it.

Welfare landscapes revisited: Legacy and possible futures of green open spaces in Danish post-war social housing estates

Anne Tietjen

University of Copenhagen, Department of Geosciences and Natural Resource Management, Landscape Architecture and Planning
e-mail: atie@ign.ku.dk

Abstract

Social housing was a cornerstone of welfare politics after World War II and today millions of people live in post-war social housing estates across Europe.Green open spaces played a central role in creating a framework for ‘the good life’ for all, which is why we propose to call them welfare landscapes. Today, these welfare landscapes are facing new challenges such as social segregation and bleak image, extreme rainfall caused by climate change and new agendas for urban green space development. Therefore, they are increasingly being transformed, yet often without awareness for their historical legacy. While there is a growing body of knowledge about the heritage of welfare architecture, the welfare landscapes are still underinvestigated. Based on Danish cases, the lecture aims to contribute to a critical understanding of the spatial qualities of welfare landscapes to inform their transformation and to add to an emerging body of knowledge about relationships between welfare and spatial design. From the 1950s through the 1970s Danish social housing estates were a laboratory for testing different models of living in a welfare society. Guided by Henri Lefebvre’s relational concept of space it is studied study how welfare materialised in the open spaces of three iconic housing estates in metropolitan Copenhagen. By unpacking relationships between conceived, perceived and lived space three interrelated heritage themes are revealed: relationships between home and common, humans and nature and between the neighbourhood and the city. In conclusion, it is discussed how these lessons from the past might inform the future.

Session I - References

SERRANO R, and BIEDMA L (2009) “Estilos de vida y percepción del estado de salud” en: Moscoso Sanchez, D. and Moyano Estrada E. fundación La Caixa pp62-86

ELOI PUIG (2010) Más allá del Error. Del Glitch al Epiletismo

AAVV Paisatge i salut. Refleions (2016). Observatori del Paisatge di Catalunya.

Juan Manuel Palerm Salazar. manifiesto por el Proyecto del Paisaje Europeo (2011). Observatorio del Paisaje de Canarias (2011). Gobierno de Canarias.

Ex-Machine.http//elcinedesolares.blogspot.com.es/2015/03.

AGNES E. VAN DEN BERG, TERRY HARTING and HENK STAATS (2007). Preference for nature in urbanized societies: Stress, restoration and the pursuit of sustainability. Journal of social vol. 631,79-96

DANIELA HALUZA, REGINA SCHÖNBAUR and RENATE CERVINKA (2014). Green perspectives for public health: A narrative review on the physiological effects of experiencing outdoor nature. International journal of environmental research and public health 11, 5445-5461

LUCY E. KENIGER, KEVIN J. GASTON, KATHRINE N. IRVINE and RICHARD A FULLER (2013). What are the benefits of interacting with nature? Environmental research and public health 10, 913-935.

EDUARDO MOYANO ESTRADA and CARLOS PRIEGO GONZÁLEZ DE CANALES. Marco técnico para analizar las relaciones entre paisaje natural, saludo y calidad de vida. Sociedad hoy 16: 31-44. Sep. 2009.

SESSION II
Healthy landscapes, healthy societies

Landscape and Social Sustainability as indicators for a healthy society

Shelley Egoz

Norwegian University of Life sciences, Ås 1430, Norway
e-mail: shelley.egoz@nmbu.no

Keywords: social sustainability, healthy society, green gentrification, just political landscape, ethics

Abstract

Conceptualising landscape as the infrastructure for human and environmental health and wellbeing (Egoz, Makhzoumi and Pungetti, 2011) is in line with the ethos of Sustainability, an aspiration for an infinite and balanced process that supports life. The ideal Sustainability is often presented in a Venn diagram, consisting of an overlap of three main pillars; environmental, economic, and social. Environmental and economic sustainability have been claimed to a limited extent to have measurable factors through the framework of ecosystem services (e.g. by McCartney, Finlayson and de Silva 2015), at the same time, the salutogenic effects of landscape on individuals have been largely established (Ward Thompson, 2011). The term social sustainability is nonetheless more ambiguous (Eizenberg and Jabareen 2017). The link between landscape and a healthy society where social equity and landscape justice are uncontested political values are at the margins of the landscape disciplines’ discourses (Gailing and Leibenath 2017, Egoz 2018). To this end this presentation calls for landscape researchers and professionals to address deeply seated ethical values and analyse landscape within political frameworks and power structures for understanding how matters of social equity and spatial justice are affected by and affect landscape and people. Through unpacking contemporary discourses on Landscape Urbanism (Waldheim, 2006), and phenomena such as Green Gentrification (Checker, 2011) this presentation argues that in order to protect, plan and manage healthy and sustainable landscapes it is necessary to shy away from apolitical stances (Hester, 2005) and acknowledge the instrumentality of political positions in affecting professional decisions regarding landscape. The main claim is that there is a need for a rigorous ethical debate and discourse on landscape and a healthy society that will boldly face the drivers and socio-political challenges in relation to landscape.

Gardens for seniors: relationship between the gardens characteristics and their usage in a pilot study in 3 Italian nursing homes

Giulio Senes, Natalia Fumagalli, Cristina Ferrara

1University of Milan, Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Milano,20133, Italy; 2Brady Shipman Martin, Dublin, D06, Ireland
giulio.senes@unimi.it

Abstract

Well-designed gardens can encourage older adults to spend more time actively outdoor, increasing their wellbeing, especially in long-term care settings. The present pilot study aims at verifying the relationship between the physical characteristics of the gardens of three nursing homes in Italy and their use in terms of spent time, type of activity and most used places. The pilot study confirm that residents go out in the gardens even if their quality is low, but if the quality of the outdoor spaces increases, they spend more time outdoor.

Keywords: Healing gardens; Seniors; Nursing Homes; Design; Seniors Outdoor Survey

Introduction

The benefits of gardens on human well-being and health are wide and are related both to physical and mental aspects (Ulrich, 1984; Adevi, & Lieberg, 2012, Cooper Marcus & Sachs, 2013; Berto, Barbiero, Barbiero and Senes, 2018). This is particularly important for older adults, especially in long-term care settings where residents spend the last years of their life (Sugiyama and Ward Thompson, 2007; Whear et al., 2014; Bassi, Rassiga, Fumagalli and Senes, 2018).

Well-designed gardens can encourage older adults to spend more time actively outdoor (Rodiek, 2010): although outdoor usage is influenced by several aspects, such as weather, health conditions, lack of interest and staff attitudes, it is also strongly related to the characteristics of the physical environment (Rodiek, 2010; Rodiek, Nejati, Bardenhagen, Lee and Senes, 2016).

Reference literature is concentrated almost exclusively in the USA and the “Anglosphere”. There are few studies in different cultural and geographic settings showing possible cross-cultural differences (Bardenhagen et al., in press): differences in the demographic profiles of residents, the types of care facilities available, the culture, history and habitudes of the residents, result in different perception and use of green spaces in nursing homes (Senes, Fumagalli, Crippa and Bolchini, 2012; Bengtsson and Carlsson, 2013; Othman & Fadzil, 2015; Fumagalli et al., 2017).

The present pilot study aims at verifying the relationship between the physical characteristics and the quality of the gardens of three nursing homes in Italy and their use in terms of spent time, type of activity and most used places.

Materials and Methods

The pilot study was carried out in 3 nursing homes in Liguria (Italy), different for location, type of care facilities and gardens. For each nursing home, the authors proceeded to:

1. assess qualitative characteristics of outdoor spaces using the Seniors’ Outdoor Survey© (SOS-2) tool (Rodiek, Nejati, Bardenhagen, Lee and Senes, 2016);

2. interview residents, relatives and staff through a properly developed questionnaire to understand how and how much they use the gardens.

SOS-2 is an environmental audit tool for evaluating how well the outdoor space in a long-term care setting supports the preferences and outdoor usage of residents, assessing physical environments from the user’s perspective.

The instrument consists in 48 items about specific characteristics of outdoor spaces, classified in 5 domains:

1. Lush garden setting, 7 items about the composition and quality of planting;

2. Safe and comfortable, 17 items about outdoor comfort and safety in relation to the main activities that take place in the garden;

3. Outdoor walking and activities, 8 items about walking and outdoor activities as gardening;

4. Easy to see and reach, 9 items about indoor-outdoor connection,

5. Connect to the world, 7 items about the possibility to establish and perceive a relationship with the outside world from within the garden.

The questionnaire included 18 questions, divided in 3 domains:

1. General information, 6 questions about gender, age, former residence and (former) job of the people interviewed;

2. Garden use, 4 questions about time spent in the garden, favorite areas, activities;

3. Feel good, 8 questions about how they feel in the garden.

Results and discussion

Data gathering (gardens assessment and questionnaires) was conducted in spring 2017, in order to evaluate the gardens in the period of blooming and avoiding extreme weather conditions (temperature and rain).

Two trained people (two of the authors) assessed 5 gardens (the Chiappori nursing home has three different outdoor spaces) rating each item of the SOS-2 tool on a 1-7 scale, with 7 as the highest and 1 as the lowest possible rating for each feature.

The results (Fig. 1) show an extreme variability among the garden and, for each garden, among each item/domain. In synthesis (Tab.1), the average score is quite low for all the gardens (3.16 is the average), even if 2 gardens (Chiappori 1 and Borelli) are higher than the average.

Recently, Bardenhagen E., Rodiek S., Nejati A. and Lee C. (2017) proposed a weighting framework for the SOS, to approximate the relative importance of different items on the tool, according to their potential level of support for resident usage and preferences. The authors applied this framework to the Liguria pilot project, selecting the 5 most important items for each domain (for a total of 25 items). Even if the total average is almost the same (3.12 vs. 3.16), the difference between the best gardens (Chiappori 1 and Borelli) and the other increases (Tab.2). Both the number of “good” (in green) and “bad” (in red) scores increases, avoiding the flattening towards the average showed in Tab.1.

In relation to the interviews, a total of 184 questionnaires were completed (30% of the total population of each nursing home), 65% by females and 35% by males. The analysis of the answers showed that the 88% of the residents and their relatives use gardens. Frequency of use, time spent, activities and feelings change in different nursing homes (Fig. 2).

Conclusions

The application of the SOS-2 tool showed a very diversified situation of the three nursing homes, even though with a general low quality of the gardens. Questionnaires revealed a major use of better designed gardens, both in terms of number of people and time spent in the garden. Despite the limited number of nursing homes, there is some correlation between the “quality” of gardens and their use.

Innovative and cross-cutting urban strategies for well-being
The renovation of public spaces in the widespread areas of Sapienza University in Rome

Alessandra Capuano

Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, 00197, Italy;
e-mail: alessandra.capuano@uniroma1.it

Keywords: health prevention; public space; well-being; green infrastructures; life styles

Extended Abstract

Introduction

Healthy and Sustainable Lifestyle. The United Nations’ Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development “Transforming our World” has as main objectives citizens’ well-being and diseases’ prevention in order to reinforce the role that cities and human settlements can play in terms of resiliency, safety and sustainability. The European Union, in the Horizon 2020 Program, has identified among the priority challenges health, wellness and the actions to enhance smart, sustainable and integrated transportation. The Work Program 2016-2017 calls entitled “Cross-cutting activities: Smart and sustainable cities -Demonstrating innovative nature-based solutions in cities” focus on actions which promote sustainable cities, quality of life and urban contexts’ appeal. Particular attention must be placed on measures that improve social collective phenomena, such as active lifestyles to prevent chronic diseases, including obesity, and special care for senior citizen.

The World Health Organization parameter of 5000 steps per day (3 km) helps to stay healthy and to halve the risk of chronic and metabolic disorders. The neuro-scientific and metabolic investigation puts the environment and lifestyles as the “primum movens” of health. Studies on animals (Maffei, 2010; Mainardi and Maffei, 2012) show that transforming the habitat is a good aid to change behavior.

The urban carelessness of many cities is therefore not only an aesthetic problem, but creates

fundamental effects on the citizens’ health. As the medical scientific literature recognizes in the

“movement” the capacity to prevent chronic and metabolic diseases, a key role on rewriting life styles can be assigned to the urban project, because the physical activity is strongly influenced by the

quality of urban spaces.

In order to promote sports and movement in the daily outdoor life, pedestrian and cycle networks, green oriented and outfitted habitats have a crucial role and an impact on the economic, social and environmental fields. It is therefore important to rethink the public space to be part of systemic actions, capable to reactivate degraded urban areas and connect new and existing environmental resources.

The Universities’ role in the urban context. Higher education institutions are appropriate locations to promote healthy lifestyles. First of all, because universities and colleges have the potential to engage large numbers of students in behavior change actions, as the number of students enrolled worldwide will reach 262 million by 2025 (Fredman P., 2012). Secondly, because higher education institutions support and establish healthy behavioral patterns throughout the lifespan. Finally because universities, especially in Europe, widespread in the city, and therefore improvement in the public space related to university areas coincides with spaces at the service of the entire population, establishing a dialectical relationship between cultural institution and the city (Balducci, 2018).

The aim of this paper is to report an ongoing research, concerning the Sapienza campus and its sprawled areas in Rome as a case study to promote lifestyle modifications and urban enhancement.

Increased physical activity of the population lowers the risk factors for chronic and metabolic diseases, ameliorates psychological well-being, betters cognitive functions and students’ learning abilities, improving academic achievements.

Furthermore universities play a central role in urban transformation, since they can bring back life and improvements to buildings and run down districts, providing structures and infrastructers that can be used not only by the university population but by all the citizens.

The networks of sustainable mobility and the case study of Sapienza University. The main focus of the study is on “student mobility” and, to a wider extent, on “urban motion” and how its enhancement could have direct beneficial effects on human health and city environment, which, if properly planned, can help not only to prevent chronic diseases, but to enrich the quality of urban space. To ensure that the policies and projects can operate synergistically with the intent to move toward sustainable lifestyles, it is necessary to rethink the design of the city.The research identifies, as a case study, the Sapienza campus because, in addition to being characterized by buildings of great architectural value - degraded by inadequate over time interventions and expansions - the university structure is branched with offices and teaching spaces that spread out in the entire city and, therefore, represents an opportunity for a pilot-project for sustainable networks at urban level, that intercept different types of population, both in terms of age and of targets.

Studying and designing new bicycle and pedestrian green paths would promote secure and healthier university routes, connected with the main metropolitan transportation railway nodes nearby, the public libraries and the facilities related to the university life. In this direction, the integration in the urban project of relations between building fabric and green infrastructures (IV), crucial in the EU 2020 strategy on biodiversity, plays a central role for the absorption of atmospheric pollutants, the reduction of the islands of heat, the qualification of the urban landscape and the improvement of life styles in the contemporary city. Thus, open spaces can become active surfaces for promoting new social practices, in the framework of integrated, sustainable urban developments.

Materials and methods

Aligned with the international guidelines described above, the research aims to promote, with the municipal and the university institutions, actions and projects to accompany plans and programs of urban regeneration, based on relationships between mobility, green infrastructures and psychophysical wellbeing. The task is to study design strategies on sample cases and to define a reference “protocol”.

The research develops on two main lines. The first, theoretical, is centered on a reflection concerning the role of the pedestrian environment and of green infrastructures.The second, operative, is centered on the analysis and evaluation of good practices and medical data, as well as on a design experimentation in order to verify and define the most appropriate strategies, applicable also in other urban contexts.

Results and discussion

Pedestrian areas and green infrastructures. Since in 1953 Van den Broek & Bakema have designed the first pedestrian street - the Lijnbaan - in Rotterdam destroyed by the German bombing, in Europe the municipal administrations have begun to adopt measures to free the historic centers from the cars and have undertaken the study of urban traffic as a fundamental component of the city planning. Today the need for sustainable mobility that combines freedom of movement with the need to reduce air pollution, noise and traffic congestion is no longer questioned. The increase in public transport, cycle paths and car sharing are some of the measures adopted that are accompanied by environmental quality control.

Among the lines of action identified by the administrations, pedestrian areas are in first place. In Italy pedestrianization and attention to the quality of the urban environment were established in the seventies for the protection of historic centers, but today’s challenge concerns network systems on the metropolitan scale, which also affect the most marginal areas, where it resides most of the population and, in particular, the most disadvantaged classes often more prone to lifestyles at risk.

Tests on cities’ life quality have shown the importance of “green attitudes” on urban design (models of Nijkamp, 1993; Holden Sustainable Mobility Area, 2007). Seminal cases in Europe are represented by the GWLS Terrein in Amsterdam, the Vauban and Rieselfeld districts in Freiburg (Forum Vauban, 2009; Mariotti and Maltese, 2011), Hammarby Sjöstad in Stockholm (Troglio, 2010) and the well-known cases of Hamburg and Copenhagen.

The well-being as the base of design. In recent years, the exhibition “Imperfect Health” (Borasi and Zardini, 2012) dealt with body well-being as design input, showing the historical connection between architecture and health. Urban networks aimed for active life styles have been adopted in many European cities: Velib’ in Paris, Velo’v in Lyon, Bicing in Barcelona, Bixi in Montréal are projects based on intermodal “park & ride” models and on cycle-stations’ diffusion. In Italy the network “Cammina città” has been created and the city of Pisa has launched a program to combat sedentary lifestyle. Risks for heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis, cancers and depression are linked to physical inactivity and overweight/obesity, especially when many young people are undertaking tertiary education (Grim M, 2011; Haase A, 2004; Huang TT-K, 2003). Lack of time, appropriate social culture, affordable facilities and lack of outdoor spaces represent the most common obstacles that may prevent physical activity in students (Clemente F.M. 2016).

The Sapienza case study. The research project focuses on Rome, that regardless of being the first city in Europe for extension of green areas (over 86.000 ha of protected areas of which 28 milions sq. mt of historic parks), green networks and environmental structures are totally inefficient. Sapienza is the largest university in Europe with its 129.500 students and is nowadays a sprawled and stretched urban structure in the surrounding neighbourhoods of San Lorenzo and Nomentano, in the city center and the Flaminio district, and with its sports facilities and medical structures extends to the north of Rome, along the Tiber and into the Parco di Veio. Therefore, the case of Sapienza, being characterized by a high number of daily attendance and multiple critical issues and presenting potentially usable residual abandoned spaces, constitutes an interesting resource for generating systemic actions in the roman urban fabric and for becoming a model of operative experimentation in other realities.

The University Campus (by Piacentini, 1936) forms, with Polyclinic (by Podesti and Lancetti, 1888), a prominent part of the city. The projects for the Polyclinic and the University arose from the architectural debates on urban design (by Sitte, Buls, Unwin) and from the planning vicissitudes for Rome elaborated in the masterplans by Viviani, Sanjust and Piacentini. In the Thirties, the urban design of the Sapienza campus represented originally the italian response to international ideas, and more specifically to the American Campus (Pica,1936). These facilities set to accommodate different demographic standards have been densified during the years in their primary enclaves and have ramified in neighboring districts, often through punctual additions without an organic design overview.

Nowdays, the research project identifies three main areas of work: a. The open spaces reconfiguration of the Campus and the Polyclinic and their surrounding areas in S. Lorenzo and Nomentano; b. The axis of Via Flaminia and its connections to the city center on the south and the Tiber on the north; c. The area of the Veio Park.

The reorganization of the connections between the different poles and the facilities located in the near districts aims to promote a slow and multi-modal mobility model and the enhancement of the residual spaces for the creation of green infrastructures and sports areas to encourage an active outdoor lifestyle.

Conclusions 

The multidisciplinary nature of the project aims to face urban transformation and encourage the changing of living habits in an innovative way: architects, physicians and biologists have as goals the interaction among disciplinary areas that usually are treated in a sectorial way (health, mobility, sustainability, nature, heritage, etc.) to work out, through the project experimentation, strategies and effectual operative models, easily transferable. This project provides in fact a multidisciplinary approach to the university environment enhancement whose transformation is driven by measurable effects on health status of the students. Such a multidisciplinary consortium constitutes a pilot experiment to form in the future the composition of research groups dealing with these tasks, not only in the academic field.

From the medical point of view, the aim is to develop and validate novel synthetic indicators of efficacy, carried out with the finality of enhancing a healthier life-style. Monitoring of efficacy will include direct known parameters (including anthropometric data, waist, BMI), measures of movement (such as physical activity tracker mobile application), and cardiovascular risk score charts, but also indirect assessors such has questionnaires on the quality of life.

Urban transformation will be based also on the medical indicators adopted as one of the design parameters. The recognizable values and territorial potentials, both concerning the environmental resources and the cultural heritage, are also crucial goals to be pursued in the enhancement of urban spaces. Italy is rich of these assets that can play an important role in the augmentation of the citizens’ well-being, in the conversion of degraded areas and as well as in the preservation programs. The urban landscape, remodeled through new public spaces and pathways for slow mobility, can be a driver with multiple effects, in the environmental, economic and social fields. The positive effects will not only be direct, in terms of health and quality of life, but also indirect, on medium-long term periods, because there will be a concrete decrease of public health costs.

In this context, the role of the academic community is central because, in addition to have an independent role, can offer a cross-cutting knowledge, according to a methodology that integrates the different subjects.

Sapienza is a crucial facility, both at the local and metropolitan scale, and its architecture, represents a heritage to be preserved and to be enhanced, according to contemporary needs. While in the Thirties, Sapienza represented a remarkable example in the international architectural debate concerning university campuses, today an experimentation based on the themes of life styles, slow mobility, green infrastructures and preservation of modern heritage, reuse of existing buildings represents an opportunity to stand out in the global context as a driver of innovation and as at the engine of a sustainable transformation process of the city of Rome, still very backward from this point of view.

Acknowledgments 

This paper reports the ongoing research “Innovative and corss-cutting urban strategies for well-being. The renovation of public spaces in the widespread areas of Sapienza University in Rome”. The working team comprises: Alessandra Criconia, Daniela Fiore, Fabrizio Toppetti.

All about the ‘wow factor’? The relationships between aesthetics, restorative effect and perceived biodiversity in designed urban planting

Helen Hoyle, James Hitchmough, Anna Jorgensen

1Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK;

2Department of Landscape, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK.
e-mail: Helen.Hoyle@uwe.ac.uk

Keywords: urban green infrastructure; aesthetic; perceived biodiversity; restorative effect; circumplex model of affect.

Abstract

Urban populations experience the health and well-being benefits of nature predominantly via urban green infrastructure. If this is to be designed and managed optimally for both nature and people, there is an urgent need for greater understanding of the complex relationships between human aesthetic experience, well-being and actual or perceived biodiversity. This integrative study assessed human aesthetic reaction, restorative effect and perceived biodiversity in relation to fine-grained categories of woodland, shrub and herbaceous planting. We surveyed 1411 members of the public who walked through planting of varying structure, species character and percentage flower cover whilst completing a site-based questionnaire. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were then carried out with 34 questionnaire participants. Correlations between perceived attractiveness and perceived biodiversity were identified. There was a correlation between perceived attractiveness and restorative effect yet this was not strong. Colourful planting with flower cover above a critical threshold (27%) was associated with the highest level of aesthetic preference. Subtle green ‘background’ planting afforded a restorative effect. These results are discussed with reference to the Circumplex Model of Affect. Our findings indicate that people appreciate colourful flowering public planting for the ‘wow factor’, but that green planting outside the narrow flowering season of most species is greatly valued. Planting moderately or most natural in structure was perceived as significantly more restorative than that least natural in structure suggesting that people in the UK may be increasingly accepting of a messier ‘ecological aesthetic’ in urban spaces.

1. Introduction 

During the last decade there has been an exponential rise in the evidence to support the proposition that exposure to natural environments and their associated wildlife has multiple benefits for human health and well-being (for reviews see Clark, Lovell, Wheeler, Higgins, Depledge & Norris, 2014; Jorgensen & Gobster, 2010). In spite of this the world’s increasingly urban population is becoming less likely to have direct contact with nature (Soga & Gaston, 2016). The need for urban green spaces to foster physical and psychological well-being has therefore becoming a key focus of urban policy. Running in parallel with this is a desire to halt the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services, as for example in the EU Biodiversity strategy 2020.

If public green infrastructure is to be designed and managed optimally, the complex relationships between human aesthetic experience, well-being, and perceived and actual biodiversity in relation to varying ‘natural’ environments need to be better understood. A useful concept to approach this by is the Circumplex Model of Affect (Russell, 1980). We applied this to interpret varying human reactions to planted environments. (Hoyle, Hitchmough & Jorgensen, 2017) Interpreting human affective response to varying landscape stimuli via this framework might also elucidate the complex and conflicting evidence, for example (Purcell et al., 2001; Martens et al., 2011) concerning the relationship between aesthetic preference, restorative effect and well-being. We asked: (a) How does perceived attractiveness relate to perceived biodiversity? (b) How does restorative effect relate to perceived biodiversity? (c) How does perceived attractiveness relate to restorative effect?

2. Materials and methods

A planting typology was first developed across each of three vegetation communities: woodland, shrub and herbaceous. Individual planting types were defined by gradients in planting structure and species character for each community Structure referred to the manner in which plants are layered through the third dimension. Species character was derived from the appearance of the species present on a gradient from native to non-native. The additional planting variable ‘percentage flower cover’ was calculated using panoramic photographs of the planting taken by the researcher. The percentage vegetated surface covered by flower was recorded. Participants (useable sample size n= 1411) walked through and observed contrasting areas of planting that corresponded with our combined structure/character planting types within each of the three vegetation communities. Surveys were conducted during different seasons, at 31 different sites within 8 locations in England.

A smaller subset (n=34) of questionnaire respondents volunteered to take part in a semi-structured in-depth interview. Interviews were conducted to better understand and interpret the questionnaire responses.

3. Results and discussion

3.1 How are perceived attractiveness and perceived biodiversity related?

Planting with a flower cover above a threshold of 27% was perceived as significantly more colourful, attractive and had a higher perceived invertebrate benefit than planting with a lower flower cover (Fig. 1). In the case of all vegetation communities, questionnaire data indicated significant correlations between perceived attractiveness and respondent perceptions for three of the four indicators of perceived biodiversity used in this study. The strongest correlation was that between perceived attractiveness and the perceived value of the planting for butterflies, bees and other insects.

3.2 How are restorative effect and perceived biodiversity related?

We found correlations between individual indicators of perceived biodiversity and restorative effect. These positive associations support the claim made (e.g. Carrus et al., 2015) that people gain psychological benefits from increased biodiversity, or contact with green spaces they think are more biodiverse (Dallimer at al., 2012), yet in the case of our research, the correlation was much weaker than that between perceived attractiveness and perceived biodiversity.

(a) The Punchbowl in May 2013 (above)

(b) The Punchbowl in August 2013 (above)

Figure 1: Planting at ‘The Punchbowl’ (Valley Gardens), Crown Estate. Vibrant planting with a flower cover above 27% (a) was considered the most attractive and associated with the ‘wowfactor’, whereas subtle greens (b) were associated with a greater restorative effect.

3.3 How are perceived attractiveness and restorative effect related?

For our questionnaire participants there was a correlation between perceived attractiveness and restorative effect, yet in contrast to some earlier findings, for example (Purcell, et al., 2001), the relationship was not strong. With reference to the Circumplex Model of Affect (Russell, 1980) evidence from both the questionnaire and interview data suggests that the lack of a strong association is partially because different landscape stimuli promote contrasting affective (emotional) responses. Our data indicate that bright, vivid, flowering displays of planting ‘least natural’ in species character are associated with a positive activated state associated with ‘excitement’ and ‘elation’. This concurs with earlier evidence that flowers can induce powerful positive emotions (Haviland – Jones, Hale, Wilson & McGuire, 2005). Our data also showed that predominantly green planting with a lower percentage flower cover was associated with the highest levels of restorative effect, (a calm, deactivated state) even though it is not considered particularly aesthetically pleasing (colourful, attractive or supportive of invertebrates). Interviews provided further insight into this relationship.

4. Conclusions

Our findings indicate that ordinary members of the public are capable of distinguishing subtle differences between seemingly similar designed or natural vegetation. Flower cover over a critical threshold of 27% generates the ‘wow factor’. In contrast, subtle greens are more conducive to quiet reflection, and induce a restorative effect. The implications for urban greenspace design are considerable. Dramatic displays of flower enhance aesthetic experience in the short term, yet psychological restoration is induced by ‘background’ green planting. This indicates that green planting has real value outside the relatively narrow flowering window of most species. Further work is required to understand the important role of spatial and temporal context in relation to the human need for stimulation versus deactivation and relaxation.

Acknowledgments 

This research was funded by a PhD scholarship from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Sheffield.

Peri-urban Green Infrastructure.
The overview of recent European studies.

Xenia Abramovich

Aalto University, Department of Architecture, Landscape Architecture Track,
Espoo, 00076 Aalto, Finland; tel. +358 469055184
e-mail: xenia.abramovich@aalto.fi

Keywords: peri-urban landscapes, green infrastructure, urban-rural relation, urban expansion, ecosystem services

Abstract

Due to the on-going urban expansion in Europe, the preservation of green infrastructure between urban-‘peri-urban’-rural areas becomes a strategic task. Land-use changes are having considerable effects on ecosystem services and human well-being, and as a result, landscapes and ecosystems are under pressure (Lafortezza, Davies, Sanesi, Konijnendijk, 2013). This paper aims to contribute to the development of a comprehensive approach when working on

the GI regeneration, planning and management in peri-urban areas. The presented study is based on a systematic literature review and explores the existing knowledge about peri-urban areas in general and on peri-urban green infrastructure in Europe in particular. The author provides an overview of recent studies and gives some suggestions for further research.

As a consequence of the review, the author concludes that in order to guarantee a better functioning and provisioning of ecosystem services as well as the liveability of peri-urban areas planners and decision makers should understand particular characteristics of peri-urban green infrastructures. Therefore, a further research is recommended to study the challenges and dynamics of green infrastructure in peri-urban areas.

Keywords: peri-urban landscapes, green infrastructure, urban expansion, ecosystem services

Introduction

Based on the data from the report of PLUREL (2011), the peri-urban area in Europe has the same amount of built-up land as urban areas, but is only half as densely populated. According to the latest studies the total built-up areas within peri-urban areas might double in 2040-2060 (Ravetz, Fertner, Sick Nielsen, 2013). From the environmental, spatial and landscape perspective, the peri-urban area is the site of the most dynamic changes and can have both the urban and rural values and challenges. This study re-thinks the traditional division between ‘urban environment’ and ‘rural environment’ and addresses the peri-urban green infrastructure as a transitional structure.

The paper first provides a terminological and conceptual review of the peri-urban and green infrastructure concepts. Then the paper describes the main approaches to peri-urban areas and introduces the green infrastructure concept as a potential strategic tool for preservation and management of ecological and cultural values in the peri-urban context.

Peri-urban Phenomena- Results and Discussion

According to the definition of PLUREL project “the peri-urban area is a space around urban areas which merges into the rural landscape. Such a
Extended Abstract built development, containing settlements of less than 20,000 people, with an average density of at least 40 persons per km2 (averaged over1km2 cells)” (PLUREL, 2010). The Council of Europe (CEMAT, 2007) defines peri-urban as a “transitional area” between strictly rural and completely urban areas, which is characterized by high pressure for urban development

(Bertrand, 2007 in Fretner, 2012). Peri-urban can be considered as “mixed areas”, where urban land uses are emerging in rural landscapes (Bailoni, Edelblutte, Tchékémian, 2012).

Land uses in peri-urban areas are under constant transformation and are driven by different dynamics. While some studies are focusing on future perspectives and scenarios for periurban transformations (DATAR, 2001; MOLAND, 2003; PLUREL, 2011), other scholars have been investigating the reasons of the current state of peri-urban areas, by exploring the past processes (Palang, Spekb, Stensekec, 2011; Rauws&Roo, 2011).

Peri-urban areas usually cross several municipalities. This situation hinders effective and coordinated planning and management, especially in-between the borders. In order to find the best planning approaches for any site in a peri-urban area- the larger perspective of regional scale is needed (Allen, 2003). The peri-urban can be examined through the lens of urban-rural flows and linkages; for example commuting, trade, shopping, recreation and energy (Ravetz, Fertner, Nielsen 2013).One of the main recent contributions to the peri-urban research was done during the PLUREL project (2007-2011). This project explores the current peri-urban conditions in Europe, studies their potentials, creates possible scenarios, gives recommendations for targeted policies and provides new concepts for urban-rural linkages (PLUREL, 2011). The PLUREL project has made a very important contribution in getting new insights into peripheral landscapes. However, the outcomes are very general and cannot be regarded as implemental tools for planning or managing the peri-urban areas.

Green infrastructure (GI) concept - Results and Discussion

According to the EEA report “Green infrastructure and territorial cohesion” (2011) there are two ways to understand or define the GI concept. The broad definition of GI includes all the ecosystem benefits that green spaces produce and the benefits that their interconnections can provide as an integrated network. The narrow definition of GI addresses only to the new benefits that are created through interlinking green spaces, for instance possibility of species migration, resilience to change including climate change, higher recreational value, etc. (EEA, 2011a)

The European Commission (EC, 2013) defines green infrastructure (GI) as “a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas which aims to design and manage the ecosystem services”. The definition of European Environmental Agency (EEA, 2011a) emphasizes the ability of GI to promote multifunctionality by performing “several functions and offering multiple benefits if its ecosystems are in a healthy state”. Moreover, the GI strategy can manage more sustainable and coherent development than ‘grey’ (man-made,

constructed) infrastructures.

Many studies are focusing on the interrelation between GI and ecosystem services (ES) concepts (Nastran et al., 2016; Kopperoinen et al., 2014). While ES concepts are used to asses and systemize the existing benefits; the GI is able to operate with the current ES benefits as well as to provide new benefits by linking and improving them on local, regional and national levels. Therefore, GI is highly connected to planning, decision-making and policymaking (EEA, 2011a).

The process of mapping GI is a complex task. The EEA report “Green infrastructure and territorial cohesion” (2011) describes advantages and disadvantages of different mapping tools; for instance, Corine Land Cover, Urban Atlas, CORILIS layers, Natura 2000 and GIS.

There is no precise tool to map GI, as a consequence, the GI is often overestimated, for example all forests automatically transformed into green infrastructure — without knowing their biodiversity value. On the other hand, some crucial spatial elements are not seen by traditional mapping approaches; for example, artificial elements like eco-bridge, small features such as hedgerows, small water courses, brownfields and forest patches that can act as eco-corridors or stepping stones (EEA, 2011a).

The GI concept is widely adopted by European Union and there is a lot of investment allocated for both GI research and implementation. GI also became a center concept in the new European biodiversity strategy (EC, 2015). There are multiple examples of GI application in different scales and projects, for instance many European countries are already active in planning national, regional and local GI (EEA, 2011a). However, recent EEA reports have showed that implementation and management of GI sometimes do not achieve the expected results. Furthermore, it is mentioned that European countries often fail to consider and protect green infrastructure as a coherent whole (EEA, 2011a).

One of the latest contributions to the GI research is done by EEA in 2017. The study provides an interactive map with the GI analysis of the main European cities. The study identifies cities with similar characteristics of urban GI by using several parameters: share of green urban areas (GUAs), degree of soil sealing, distribution of GUAs, effective GI (urban hinterland), hotspot ratio (hinterland), terrestrial urban blue areas, low density areas, share of urban forest and share of Natura 2000 sites. As a result the study provides eight urban GI (UGI) typologies: ‘Fragmented cities’, ‘Green outskirts cities’, ‘Natural cities’, ‘Hotspot cities’, ‘Green cities’, ‘Green-grey sealed cities’, ‘Forest cities’, and ‘Natural blue cities’ (EEA, 2017b).

The EEA study can be considered as a good start for creating a strong data base about the current potentials of UGI in Europe. Although it identifies the main UGI typologies, it doesn’t consider the particular GI challenges neither gives any instructions for further planning. Also the methodology of this EEA study has some limitations. For example, the parameter “terrestrial urban blue areas” was calculated only within the urban boundaries, which often don’t include the sea shore. Therefore the GI of some coastal cities is underestimated.

Peri-urban approaches and green infrastructure - Results and Discussion Within the process of urbanization, several approaches have been adopted when developing and managing peri-urban areas. According to Qviström and Saltzman (2007) cultural and environmental values of peri-urban landscape were often overlooked. A peri-urban area was regarded as transitional zone, city backyard “that is waiting for future plans to come” (Bryant, 1982).

In Europe, the most significant platform for reconsideration of landscape values was provided by the European Landscape Convention (ELC) in 2000. According to ELC, all landscapes are an important part of the quality of life for people, in both urban areas and countryside, as well as degraded areas and ordinary areas.

In the last decade, new concepts such as GI and ES have emerged and influenced the ways in which research assess and analyse peri-urban areas. Peri-urban landscapes are considered an essential part of urban-rural environment, with its particular character, identity, dynamics, ecosystems and cultural values (Qviström&Saltzman, 2007; Busck, Kristenesen, Praestholm, 2008).

According to the EEA reports (2011a, 2014, 2015, 2017a), there is a need for multilevel policy approach between local, national and European levels, in order to protect and manage peri-urban areas. Moreover, in the EEA report “Landscape Fragmentation in Europe” (2011b), it is mentioned that the value of landscapes is not yet fully acknowledged in decision-making (e.g. transport urban development).

The PLUREL project (2011) claims that “regional government’s role in planning is generally weak across Europe, and economic growth is favored over sustainability concerns” (EEA, 2011a). UN-HABITAT, ICLEI and others call for a new “green mosaic” or “integrated landscape approach” that can provide economic, social and environmental co-benefits (GLOBALANDS, 2015).

In this context, several scholars have stated that GI can be a tool for protecting ecosystem services in peri-urban landscapes. Furthermore, some studies re-thinking green belt solutions for managing peri-urban areas are embedding the GI strategy instead. “Green belt is not a mechanism designed for the fringe. Rather, it is a means of diverting development pressure away from the edge of built-up areas, promoting urban regeneration and protecting ‘open’ countryside from sprawl” (Gallent et al., 2006, in Gallent&Shaw, 2007). Such studies claim that GI is capable to include various ecological, cultural, economic factors together and improve the wellbeing and livability of urban fringe. “GI will allow for more sophisticated and dynamic understandings of such spaces and to enable the identification and quantification of formerly underappreciated assets of the urban fringe, including newly identified economic benefits” (Thomas&Littlewood, 2010).

Conclusions

In last decades there is a growing awareness of the importance of peri-urban landscapes. The urbanization in Europe has caused a significant reduction of ecosystem services quality in peri-urban areas (EEA, 2011a). Accordingly, the European Commission is looking for new integrated approaches to preserve landscapes and ecosystem services in peri-urban areas.

GI is considered by many scholars as a strategy that can help to protect ecosystem services in peri-urban landscapes and promote the sustainable urban growth. GI is already widely adopted by many European countries and even implemented in a coordinated way in various spatial levels. However, there is no specific approach to work, map and assess the performance of GI in peri-urban areas. As a result, many countries fail to preserve GI in periurban

areas as a coherent whole and economic growth is favored over sustainability concerns (EEA, 2011a; PLUREL, 2011).

Recent studies about GI describe the general trends of GI in Europe and identify different urban GI typologies in its main cities (EEA, 2017b). However, there is a knowledge gap about the particular features, challenges and trends of GI in peri-urban conditions.

Peri-urban areas are driven by different urban and rural dynamics, tensions between various stakeholders, competition for land, etc. In spite of this, recent peri-urban studies don’t provide clear recommendations or guidance about how GI should respond to peri-urban dynamics.

To conclude, in order to protect peri-urban landscapes and their ecosystem services there is a need in more detailed research about dynamics, challenges and potentials of GI in peri-urban areas.
Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my supervisor Prof. Juanjo Galan, Aalto University and Prof. Mina Di Marino, NMBU University for the advices and support in the writing of this paper.

Assessing relevant knowledge related to the types and characteristics of urban green & blue spaces having a significant impact on human mental health and well-being

Maria Beatrice Andreucci1, Barbara Livoreil2, Agnieszka O. Guizzo3, Sjerp de Vries 4, Annamaria Lammel5, Alessio Russo6, Liz O’brien7, Zoe Davies8, Julie Glanville9, Hans Keune10, Melissa R. Marselle11, Roy Remmen10, Hanna Wood9.

1Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, 00196, Italy; 2Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Biodiversité, Paris, 75005, France; 3National University of Singapore, Singapore, 117576, Singapore; 4Wageningen University & Research, Wageningen, PO Box 47, 6700 AA, the Netherlands; 5Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint-Denis, 93526, France; 6Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, 690922, Russia; 7Forest Research, Farnham, GU32 3ER, United Kingdom; 8Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, Canterbury, CT2 7NR, United Kingdom; 9University of York, York, YO10 5NH, United Kingdom; 10University of Antwerp, Antwerp, B-2610 Belgium; 11German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research, Leipzig, 04103, Germany.
e-mail: mbeatrice.andreucci@uniroma1.it

Keywords: Health-sensitive urban design; Healthy urban landscapes; Mental disorders in urbanites; Mental Health promotion; Urban Green Blue Infrastructure

Abstract

Urban areas, hosting two thirds of the population of the European Region, are often unhealthy places to live, characterized by heavy traffic, pollution, noise, abuse and social segregation especially for disadvantaged people, adolescents and young families. To reduce negative mental health effects of environmental degradation and climate change, functional and healthy ecosystems in cities are a necessity. In particular, Green Infrastructure: green (land) and blue (water) spaces that can improve environmental conditions and therefore citizens’ health and quality of life. Recent studies demonstrated that provision of ecosystem services associated with human health do not consistently depend on the amount of the greenery, but rather quality of that vegetated open spaces. Another emerging research area called evidence-based design has investigated the influence of exposure to different types and components of the landscape on bio-physical responses and self-reported health measures. These findings bring up the need to synthetize the available knowledge about the types and components of urban green & blue spaces and their likely positive impact on mental health, and also to identify the gaps in knowledge. EKLIPSE is a EU funded project to facilitate linkages between science, policy and society, through different actions, such as knowledge synthesis, identifying research priorities, and building networks of knowledge holders and users. EKLIPSE has been asked to support the conduct of a systematic, multidisciplinary and cross-cultural knowledge assessment of “the types and components of urban green & blue spaces and their likely positive impact on mental health”. The proposed contribution will illustrate the planning stage of this work that will be conducted by a group of European experts within the next 12 months.

Introduction

Urbanites experience increasing rates of isolation, mental disorders (Gruebner et al., 2017) and non communicable diseases, injuries, alcohol and substance abuse, with the poor typically exposed to the unhealthiest environments (WHO, 2016). To enhance the mental health of urbanites, a comprehensive approach is needed, requiring researchers, practitioners, communities and decision-makers to collaborate and promote ‘health-sensitive’ planning, evidence-based design and practices aimed at prevention and control (Andreucci, 2017).

The EU funded project EKLIPSE, in March 2017, called for experts to assess and share existing cross-disciplinary knowledge about the types of habitats and features of these habitats that have a significant impact on mental health and well-being. Gaps in this knowledge and possible future research will also be highlighted. The call followed up a request initially put to EKLIPSE by the French Ministry in charge of the Environment (MTES).

An Expert Working Group (EWG) was formed to answer this request. Another task that the EWG was given, is to provide recommendations to various practitioners (landscape architects, urban planners, city managers, etc.) for the conservation, creation, design and management of natural spaces that would benefit urban citizens, by maintaining or enhancing their mental health and well-being. Guidelines will be developed in a form to be possibly taken into account by the French Code de l’Urbanisme et Code de l’Environment, in accordance with European regulations already in practice or under development.

For the purpose of this work, the EKLIPSE EWG on “Mental health and green-blue urban open spaces” defined ‘green/blue spaces’: “Green Infrastructure: Green (land) and blue (water) spaces that can improve environmental conditions and therefore citizens’ health and quality of life. It also supports a green economy, creates job opportunities and enhances biodiversity” (European Commission, 2016). In order to cover the wide range of green spaces initially brought by the request, the EWG will include all sorts of urban green and blue landscapes, i.e. urban forests, gardens parks, allotments and tree-lined walkways.

Materials and methods

The members of the EKLIPSE EWG were selected on the basis of their expertise, they represent research, academia and design practice in the following areas: landscape architecture, urban planning, evidence-based design, biodiversity, ecology and medicine, and they all come from international multidisciplinary background.

To assess and synthesise relevant knowledge related to the types and characteristics of urban green & blue spaces having a significant impact on human mental health and well-being, the EWG will use different methods and approaches. One maybe to perform a causal chain analysis and develop a conceptual model. This model is not as much a purpose in itself, as it is a tool to guide the next step in the knowledge synthesis and to structure the results of the literature search (and reporting of its outcomes). Such a model may also help to explain heterogeneity in outcomes of studies, e.g. because of differences in effect modifiers and confounders that were taken into account, in population segment studied, etc.

At this stage of the project, the choice is still unclear between conducting a Rapid Evidence Assessment and a Systematic Review. This will mostly depend on availability of resources.

In order to better anticipate the workload, a scoping exercise will consist of three main stages. Stage one will involve a structured search of the scientific literature in one database per discipline (ecology, landscape design, health) to assess quantity and relevance of existing scientific articles. Stage two will be based on the research outcomes suggested by EWG members aligned with their scientific field and expertise. If a Rapid Evidence Assessment (Woodcock et al., 2014) is finally decided upon, stage three will generate a narrative synthesis of the selected scientific literature, as well as a database of case studies highlighting the most important indicators and methods for assessing the impact of green/blue spaces on mental health.

Depending on available resources, a Systematic Review (SR) will be conducted in order to provide a more thorough assessment of the existing knowledge on the topic. The challenge faced here is that there is a lot of literature about the relationship between greenness and mental health, which has been reviewed by many authors, but targeting the impact of types of habitats and their features makes the collation of relevant articles quite challenging.

There is also the likelihood of a high diversity of research hypotheses, designs and measured variables that could complicate the synthesis of evidence.

Reconciling methods with output, a SR will give coherent, scientific explanations for disorderly and fragmented results in the primary literature. Overarching patterns or problems that are not normally discernible in individual studies may emerge.

Discussion

A great number of scientific studies have already been conducted on the relationship between exposure to the natural environment and human health and well-being. The EKLIPSE EWG, currently engaged in the systematization of the available knowledge about the types and components of urban green spaces and their likely positive impact on mental health, has so far identified 15 systematic reviews; other literature reviews and a significant preliminary scoping work have also already been conducted. Recent studies show that the mere existence of urban open spaces, or their quantity in the urban landscape do not have as strong impact on the mental health and wellbeing of the population as their quality when it comes to delivery of the ecosystem services associated to health and wellbeing (e.g., Graça et al., 2018, Zhang et al., 2017). To this end the application of seemingly distant research areas may help. One example is the use of Neuroscience in an evaluation of the “healing” potential of different kinds of landscapes. In an electroencephalography (EEG) study, Olszewska et al. (2016) showed that landscape scenes classified by experts as the most contemplative, induce different patterns of brain activity in people passively observing them as compared to less contemplative landscapes, with contemplative landscapes inducing brainwave rhythms more beneficial for healthy mind. Qualitative methodologies such as ethnographic approaches including autoethnography, visual ethnography, and accompanied visits, participant observation, photo elicitation as well as interviews and focus groups can enable researchers to gain rich data on the meanings and experiences of urban green and blue spaces, and provide insights into the types and characteristics of these spaces that can impact people’s mental health and wellbeing (O’Brien and Varley, 2012). More and more researchers argue that the daily exposures to different types of landscapes in the city can significantly influence people’s mental health over the course of their lives (Helbich, 2018; Naele et.al., 2017).

At the same time, the heterogeneity of objectives, theoretical frameworks, and research methods make the comparison and the establishment of robust results difficult (Zufferey & King, 2015). Most studies are single discipline, with limited interdisciplinary scientific research confirming the existence of a significant influence of the exposure to green and/or blue spaces on human health and well-being of the presence of green and/or blue spaces.

The need to provide a synthesis with respect to the available knowledge about the relationship between Green Blue Infrastructure and mental health seem to be confirmed also by the growing demand from policy makers. For instance, in the “Urban green spaces: brief for action” published recently, WHO emphasized the need for a change in urban health initiatives with a strong focus on the creation, promotion and maintenance of green spaces, with an explicit call for expert advice (WHO, 2017).

A Structured listening method to retrofit an urban park evaluating the urban green system

MariaElena Menconi1, David Grohmann1

1Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, Perugia, 06126, Italy
e-mail: mariaelena.menconi@unipg.it

Keywords: participatory processes; local community’s involvement; urban parks retrofitting; SWOT analysis; GIS platform.

Abstract

The paper develops a method for using a participatory approach to evaluate the local community’s requirements for an urban park in the light of the features and the needs of the whole urban green system. The method does not scatter community interests, because the community is called to focus its attention on the park retrofitting and the experts are called evaluate the proposals by analysing the entire urban green system.

The method is a revisiting of the SWOT analysis focusing on urban green areas. In our method, the internal factors are those currently represented in the park and the external factors are the new design elements and the new functions suggested by the stakeholders. This method is developed using a dedicated web-based tool integrating the face-to-face and online approaches, for the inclusive involvement of local community.

Keywords: participatory processes; local community’s involvement; urban parks retrofitting; SWOT analysis; GIS platform.

Introduction

The value enhancement and management of urban green areas are essential elements of efficient urban renewal (Anguluri & Narayanan, 2017) and urban parks usually are the largest green spaces in the urban context. Too often, green areas are designed by copying pre-existing models, without researches about the functions and the services that the area should offer to continuously changing local communities, and without any analysis of the entire urban green system (Astiaso Garcia, 2017). To interpret the real needs of local communities, their involvement in retrofitting design of urban parks is fundamental (Deakin, 2012). Over the years, various researchers have focused their attention on specific participatory tools or general participation frameworks (Luyet, Schlaepfer, Parlange, Buttler, 2012; McLain, Banis, Todd,

Cerveny, 2017) and there are a lot of interesting reviews (Kovács et al., 2017; Smajgl & Ward, 2015).

Starting from these considerations, the work develops an innovative participatory design method to retrofit urban parks. This method simultaneously develops alternative participation tools to address the diversity of urban communities, and it entails analysis and interpretation of the expectations of the local community in the light of the urban green system as a whole.

Materials and methods

The method is a revisiting of the SWOT analysis focusing on urban green areas evaluation. To collect the stakeholders’ evaluation about the park in an organized manner, the authors develop a structured listening method that uses four pivotal questions: M, what is to be maintained? O what is to be organized (added)? V, what is to be value enhanced (requalified)? E, what is to be eliminated?

The method is called M.O.V.E. because “move” is a word that refers to a process, and the individual letters of the word are the first letters of the words used for the four previous questions.

In our method the internal strengths are the design elements and the functions currently present in the park to be preserved (letter M) and enhanced (letter V), the internal weaknesses are the design elements and the functions currently present in the park to be removed (letter E). The new design elements and new

functions suggested by the stakeholders for the park are classified by the experts as external opportunities (first letter O of the figure 1) or threats (second letter O), on the basis of a GIS platform that evaluates their presence in other areas of the urban green system, interpreting synergies, conflicts, complementarities and distances along vehicular and pedestrian paths.

There are alternative means for participation: periodic workshops, dedicated listening points, or on-line discussion rooms through a civic medium specifically developed for the process.

Figure 1 The M.O.V.E. method

Within each discussion room, a single user can read all the proposals submitted by others, post a comment or a “like” to a proposal made by others, or add a new proposal. For new proposals, the user is asked to choose the reference letter of MOVE, and then to give some descriptions, pictures, videos.

The resulting design proposals of this method represent the combination of all the technically feasible proposals, evaluate as not conflictual or redundant with the other green areas of the urban context. This is a first phase of a complex method finalized to obtain a consistent participatory retrofitting design.

Results and discussion

The method is being used by the city of Lumezzane (region Lombardia) applying the method to find the best solutions to retrofit a green urban area, called S. Sebastiano. The park is located in the centre of the city and it was used in the past as a graveyard (Figure2).

Using the civic medium it is possible to access to discussion rooms regarding different parts of the park by clicking the text boxes of Fig.2.

The listening point is at the Municipal library. At the library, there is an access to the civic medium with personnel able to help in web-navigation. During the workshops, the discussion rooms are translated into different posters useful to group participants in thematic groups representative of different interests.

Figure 3 shows the census of the urban public green network realized by the experts and used to classify the proposals between opportunities and threats.

The process is still on-going. At the first of May there were 108 total stakeholders, including 78 residents (aged 24 to 82) and 30 inhabitants (ages 44-60). According to Alvarez, Borsi, and Rodriguez (2017), this case study has confirmed that the means for participation (face-to-face Figure 1 The M.O.V.E. method
or online) depend on people’s lifestyles: some 89% of the employed people preferred using civic medium, while 93% of the retirees preferred the workshops.

Even though these results are partial, they shows that the utilization of the Internet is functional to ensuring inclusivity of the local community, only if this approach is complementary to faceto-face dialogue (Alvarez, Borsi, Rodrigues, 2017).

The method is proving to be an important tool for residents to become familiar with the urban green system, since residents often go to the same park by habit, without looking into other green areas for services of which they feel the need.

Seventy-three percent of the stakeholders involved said that the evaluation by

experts was useful, although the oldest stakeholders (age 75 and over) don’t’ agree when the expert suggest them to use a different green areas to find the service required even when the new suggested walk path is shorter than that usually taken to get to the S. Sebastiano Park.

Figure 2 Maps of the urban park called S.Sebastiano

Conclusions

This method represents the first phase of a complex process dedicate to build a shared parkretrofitting design. The entire process consists of three different active-participation phases.

This phase regards the selection of park design themes that are the combination of all the technically feasible proposals, evaluated by the experts as not conflictual or redundant with the other green areas of the urban context. These results serve as the basis for creating a deck of park-design cards usable in a successive phase of participation consisting in a card game to create park-retrofitting alternatives. The last phase regards a final vote among 3D models of the alternatives to define the final design.

The first phase is the most complex to manage by the experts, because they have to study the presence and the quality of all the functions and the services of the entire urban green spaces to evaluate every stakeholder’s proposal. The complex data gathering about the actual urban green network is useful to revise the urban plan giving more attention to the urban green system and it is usable to repeat this process in all the urban parks that need to retrofit in the same urban context.

Figure 4 The census of the urban public green network

Space to nature.
De-sealing policies and Transferable development rights

Fulvio Adobati1, Emanuele Garda2

1Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Bergamo, 24129, Italy;
2Università degli Studi di Bergamo, Bergamo, 24129, Italy
e-mail: fulvio.adobati@unibg; emanuele.garda@unibg.it

Keywords: soil sealing; de-sealing; ecosystem services; multi-level governance; urban resilience

Abstract

The intense urbanization that in the second half of the twentieth century has affected the European territory has determined the loss of a considerable amount of agricultural and naturalistic lands. Soil sealing for urban and infrastructure development constitutes the most intense form of land degradation and affects all ecosystem services (Tobias et al 2018).

This intense phase was supported by a cycle of growth that showed signs of an irreversible crisis only in the last decade, opening up to a new and unprecedented season. Therefore, it is necessary to support a partial natural spaces restoration lost in the previous season by encouraging the removal of the sealed surfaces.

Starting from the analysis of some experiences (SoS4Life project, Contratto di fiume Olona-Bozzente-Lura, etc.), our review aims at underlining the effects of de-sealing policies in terms of reduction of environmental risks, increase of green spaces and improvement of built areas.

Introduction

Urbanization processes which involved Italy and Europe in the twentieth century have reduced the quantity and quality of permeable soils. They have also weakened the ability of the cities to manage natural events. This is in particular true for periurban territories or for areas along main rivers where the presence of buildings and sealed areas where it represents a problem regarding hydrogeological, ecological and landscaping aspects.

Because of the need to safeguard urban systems, assuring an increase of the green areas and a more efficient management of the rainwater, it is fundamental to favor de-sealing policies.

Worldwide and at the European level, de-sealing actions:

-Are part of the Guidelines on best practice to limit, mitigate or compensate soil sealing foreseen by the European commission retrieve built spaces;

-Are consistent with Horizon 2020 aims for a sustainable management of natural resources towards a society more resilient to the climate changes;

-Are part of the main topics of the 7th Environment Action Programme for the natural capital and ecosystem services protection;

-Have common elements with the 11 Goal (Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable) and the 13 Goal (Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts) foreseen by 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;

-At last, US Environmental Protection Agency promotes de-sealing soils as a contribution to green infrastructure and points out the multiple benefits for humans and nature.

Materials and methods

Our review provides an analysis of different experiences dealing with de-sealing or greening in existing built areas with reference to the governance models adopted at national and international level. The main experiences promoted at European level represent the starting point of the research. Some German cities have been dealing with these issues for several years, for example:

-Berlin has been implementing a program to deseal and remove paved surfaces in the city. With its Landscape Plan, the city has spent about 16 million of dollars over 12 years removing paved surfaces in about 1,400 sites (Beatley, 2000);

-Dresden has established a “soil compensation account” (Bodenausgleichskonto). With this tool the new urban projects on undeveloped land require greening measures or de-sealing within the city boundaries (EU, 2012);

-Saarbrücken has one of the most innovative programs for promoting green development in the city, with particular focus on rainwater management. This program provides small funding to citizens and businesses to improve water management and reduces stormwater runnoff. Among the incentivized actions it can include projects for desealing, or taking up impermable pavent and replacing it with vegetation.

This review proposes a critical comparison between some national cases with the aim of highlighting some characteristics (objectives, tools, subjects involved, first results, etc.). The main cases identified will concern:

-The Accordo di Programma Quadro Malpensa 2000, a long and complex path that has led to the transfer of 536 families present in 266 buildings, the demolition of a large part of these buildings (with interventions of de-sealing) and the subsequent re-naturalization of the areas;

-The Olona-Bozzente-Lura River Contract promoted and supported by Lombardy Region (2004) with ARPA Lombardy, the Provinces of Milan, Varese, Como, Basin Authority of the Po river, Interregional Office for the Po river, Scholastic Office for Lombardy and 78 municipalities. This project aims to implement a series of integrated interventions for hydraulic defence, improvement of water quality and restoring of river ecosystems. Among the addresses suggested by the River Contract, it is planned to demolish buildings in areas close to the river using the “transfer of development rights” mechanisms;

-The SoS4Life project promoted by the province of Forlì-Cesena and other institutional subjects (Regione Emilia-Romagna, Legambiente, Ance, etc.). It is a demonstrative project that aims to enforce, at the municipal scale, of European orientations about soil protection and urban regeneration. This initiative supports three de-sealing interventions in three different urban areas.

Our research considers the analysis of development rights transferability in the Italian territory, starting from some regional laws (Emilia Romagna, Lombardia, Liguria, etc.).

Results and discussion

The comparison between different cases, including actions produced by public policies and/or urban planning tools (in this case legitimate by national or regional laws), allowed:

- To highlight different de-sealing approaches, between direct or indirect conditioning; strategic or tactical behavior;

- To recognize some “environments” in which are activated these initiatives (periurban territories, areas along the great rivers, etc.);

- To recognize in these initiatives a multi-scale attitude both the expected effects and the type of institutional subject involved;

- To identify the main subjects, with specific roles and responsibilities, involved in this type of process;

- To recognize limits and critical issues.

Conclusion

In a literature review, the state of research about the impacts of soil sealing is far more advanced than about the potential and prerequisites of unsealing (Tobias et al. 2018).

Despite this lack of interest, de-sealing actions are slowly spreading in different urban contexts, trying to answer several needs:

-Increase the green open space quantity and ecosystem services recovery;

-Balance the soil-sealing negative externalities;

-Improve the idraulic risks mitigation and management;

-Improve the urban areas comfort conditioning the urban heat island.

The case studies show a diversified view of objectives, technical devices and results. These plural efforts demonstrate the effective interest of public institutions in the de-sealing policy. These initiatives can be interpreted as a remedy to the problems generated by the long season of urban growth.

Healthy landscape design in the agricultural fringe of the cities

Bruna Di Palma1, Maddalena Verrillo2

1ITABC Institute for Technologies Applied to Cultural Heritage CNR National Research Council of Italy, 00015 Monterotondo St. Rome, Italy; 2DiARC Department of Architecture University of Naples Federico II, Naples, 80134, Italy
e-mail: 1 bruna.dipalma@itabc.cnr.it; 2magdaverrillo@hotmail.com

Abstract

On the edge of the dense fabric of the cities there are large areas of open spaces characterized by an agricultural identity. A fringe landscape (Gibelli, 2003) that is not composed by country areas, but from agricultural areas that have retained until now a character rooted in the relationship between their morphological connotation and the use of the land that the population continues to make of them, the result of the survival and continuity of the historical agricultural activities. These areas are often considered as other entities than the city traditionally understood and are included within urban parts that have developed through functionalistic logics creating isolated enclaves of residences or public facilities. These logics of development have often led these agricultural areas to perform largely a secondary role within the general process of urban development and in turn become semi-abandoned enclaves of specific forms of landscape. The role of this fringe areas could overturn the gaze towards urban pathonogenesis that involves today cities and people and become the protagonist, on the contrary, of prevention strategies that involve both the development and conservation of a healthy urban life and the increase of the general wellbeing of population, starting from the concept of salutogenesis (Antonovsky, 1979). This is an approach to the project that develops through an attention focused on those forms of space and architecture capable of promoting health, equity of health, social justice and sustainable development, as recommended by the Declaration of Zagreb for the Healthy Cities. The project for the regeneration of the agricultural fringe of landscape can therefore be characterized by its meanings of prevention, promotion and improvement of the quality of life through the setting up of spaces for the “green care” that include social and therapeutic horticulture, animal assisted interventions, care farming, facilitation green exercise as treatment, wilderness therapy, nature therapy, eco-therapy (Sempik, Hine, Wilcox, 2010).The case of the proposal for the agricultural park of the San Rocco area in Naples fits into this panorama and represents an experimental case of regeneration design for a agricultural fringe area on the edge of the dense city where the vegetable gardens with fruit trees are structural elements morphologically and functionally characterizing the landscape. Here the research on the forms of therapeutic agriculture represents an experience of connection between preventive planning and design strategies of care of the space and care of the population in which the continuity of the identity of the public open areas leads integrated interventions of landscape transformation able to improve the quality of life even in surrounding fringe and urban areas.

Keywords: fringe landscape, landscape regeneration, agricultural therapy, healthy city

Introduction

Periurban fringes on the edge of the dense city are the link between the peripheral areas, the territorial reference nodes and the dense historical fabric and are often characterized by the presence of large open spaces with a rural character. These landscapes offer the opportunity to rethink the therapeutic role and care of agriculture, intended as a tool for recovery of physical, psychological, social and environmental health.

As an urban care device, agriculture is understood here as the theme that guides the construction of large open spaces of territorial connection, not focusing instead on the most widespread and current trends in acupuncture actions and the spread of urban gardens. In this key, the agricultural space becomes the site of the design of areas, paths and architectures capable of identifying therapeutic sequences of care both for the recovery of the rural landscape of urban fringe and for the improvement of community health.

Designing, building, cultivating and taking care

Nicola Emery in his essay Progettare, costruire, curare (2010), recalling the Platonic analogy between city and pasture, defines the city as a place that influences and nourishes the growth of those who live there, highlights the healing aim belonging to urban design. “The project, in other words” - says Emery - “should be conceived as implying a therapeutic aspect, it should imply a sort of preventive therapy, something similar to the right cultivation and proper care of the pasture, whose good condition will affect, not a little, on the health of citizens “ (Emery, 2010).

The concepts of preventive therapy and health promotion (the process by which people improve control and the direct management of their well-being conditions) are the basis of the theory of salutogenesis. This theory underlines the passage from a vision in which etiology is attributed to hereditary traits, relational problems during the evolutionary phase, microbes and other pathogenic organisms to a perspective in which the behavior and lifestyle of the individual are decisive for the disease prevention. These last aspects find evident incitements in the quality, in the structure and in the organization of the spaces and the environment that are the active background to the carrying out of the daily activities of the people life. The health promotion, a strategy whose importance was underlined starting from the Zagrabia Declaration for the Healthy Cities of 2008 and up to the Shanghai (2016) and Pécs Declaration of 2017, (within the “Healthy Cities” strategic program of the World Health Organization), finds its specific field of experimentation within the landscape of urban fringe. Indeed the project for the redevelopment of the periurban agricultural landscape can be characterized by its meanings of prevention, promotion and improvement of the quality of life through the configuration of spaces for the “green care” that include social and therapeutic horticulture, animal assisted interventions, care farming, facilitated green exercise as treatment, wilderness therapy, nature therapy, ecotherapy (Sempik, Hine, Wilcox, 2010).

The agricultural park of the San Rocco valley as a therapy device

North of the historic center of Naples, within the Parco Metropolitano delle Colline, there is the area of the San Rocco valley which has retained its agricultural character as a factor characterizing the construction and use of its landscape.

To the north, the area is defined by the ground level differences of the valley, to the east by the viaduct of the Naples Metro Line 1 and then to the residential area of the Colli Aminei, to the south by a small settlement of schools and the Cardarelli hospital, to the west from the New Policlinico hospital. Inside of it, there is archipelago of farms in close relation with the agricultural areas. The new agricultural park project for this area follows the requirements of the development urban plan of the San Rocco valley, but also the research themes of “The city as therapy and the therapy for the city” (PRIN 2015 - University of Rome, Naples, Venice). The setting of the project for the new park starts from some morphological figures of the existing landscape that become leading concepts for the new design: the natural morphology of the valley and of the wooded and cultivated gardens, the artificial morphology of great hospitals’ structure.

The paths draw areas for “green care” activities also following “healing gardens” principles, leading themes that give coherence to the landscape forms as therapeutic space. In its development the project works in terms of general clarity through the development of areas and paths that give a feeling of stable simplicity and control about the understanding of the park’s articulation. This aspect is therapeutic for all those stress related pathologies and is balanced to a design linked to the variety of spaces, routes and crop types also in relation to the alternation of the seasons, which instead provides the stimulation of senses.

The north-west south-east route identifies the eastern boundary of the park crossing it at the point of greatest ground level difference, characterized by the organised presence of already cultivated areas, and intercepting the area of the new rural residences. Indeed, to the east the park is characterized by the presence of a new residential settlement which is based on the principles of rural architecture, both linked to the local architecture tradition, and with respect to more current forms of living and of residential treatment assistance. To the residential open space design is associated a new social dimension not only linked to the land cultivation, but also related to exchange and exhibition for a renewed sense of belonging and identity, aspects that contribute to reinforce a dimension of collective, physical, psychological and social well-being. To the west the park presents itself as a new open space for relations with the consolidated presence of two large hospital facilities. In this sense, indeed, the western zone is organized to accommodate spaces which work on the aspect of health promotion, prevention and care through activities with animals. There are areas for pet therapy, care farming, but also for experimental research on agriculture as therapeutic device. On the south edge areas the park read the urban materials’ features that define its perimeter and, related to the road presence, mitigation areas are set up through the placement of trees which define a “protection” diaphragm. To the north, instead, the trees constitute a very permeable edge linked to the landscape of the valley with a path characterized by the presence of panoramic points that rhythmically measure its development through the areas of “green exercise” and “wilderness therapy”.

Conclusions

The case of the project of the Agricultural Park of the Vallone San Rocco in Naples offers the possibility of verifying how a regenerative strategy based on therapeutic criteria can plunge its roots in a consolidated identity area and can also renew the agricultural features in terms of curative device. In this sense, to the growing demand for public green is offered a response in terms of large periurban open spaces, re-qualifying the pre-existing rural context and supporting the presence of large hospitals through open care areas. The culture of health and prevention is intertwined with that one of re-appropriation of the agricultural identity of a fragile and peripheral urban area, contributing to place it again at the center of the city’s development and of health and well-being policies, with the possibility of expanding this approach beyond boundaries of the agricultural park.

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Landscape and Music

Giuseppina La Face

I would like to thank the organizers, Professor Patrizia Tassinari in particular, for inviting me to this important meeting. My paper will be a bit off-center with respect to the general topic that is being discussed here. I am a musicologist, and although I love nature, my scientific knowledge of it is very limited. The one thing I can say for sure is that, while artists have always been interested in nature, musicians have also been attracted to it, and have made it a central theme in some of their compositions. Let me give you only a few examples that are known to everybody: Vivaldi’s Four seasons, Beethoven’s “Pastoral” symphony, Mendelssohn’s The Hebrides, Smetana’s The Moldau, and so on.

In general, the language of music does not really lend itself to depicting a landscape. Music is a temporal art: as such, it can express the mode of movement with great symbolical evidence (fast/slow, continuous/discontinuous, calm/impetuous, etc.) and hence, by analogy, a series of states of mind related to dynamic processes (agitated, sweet, melancholy, sparkling, etc.). A specific melodic or dynamic structure may activate synesthetic analogies: this is because, when they are received, sounds are categorized and interpreted not just according to their physical qualities such as pitch and loudness, but also in terms of different, but analogue, sense modes that involve vision (e.g. ‘bright/dark’, ‘small/big’, ‘shiny/opaque’), or touch (e.g. ‘soft/hard’, ‘smooth/rough’), but not hearing. In music, ‘bright’ and ‘shiny’, for instance, are associated with high frequencies, with timbres rich in high harmonics, and with soundwaves that spread more directionally (a trumpet, for instance); ‘dark’ is instead associated with low frequencies, with sounds rich in medium-low harmonics that are more diffusive (as with the horn).

With all this said, today I would like to focus on pieces in which the landscape reference is primarily expressed through poetic, imaginative suggestions, on which the composer then builds his sound artifact. I have chosen to illustrate three compositions by one of the foremost musicians of all times, Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Through my examination of them, I will try to show how art music can describe or evoke a landscape, by connecting it to the emotional life of an individual. We will take a look at three Lieder, which are compositions for singing voice and piano set to German texts, a favorite genre in Romantic Germany and Austria in the early 19th century.

I am going to start with Auf dem Wasser zu singen (D 774), set to a text by Friedrich Leopold Count Stolberg-Stolberg (1750-1819), a peer and friend of Goethe. It is a Lied about water, which is one of the poetic subjects most cherished by Schubert throughout his whole Lieder production. In Schubert, as in the physical world, water can manifest itself in several different states – as a river or waterfall, as a lake or sea, a spring or pond, as rain or snow or ice: all of these states, however, bear a relationship to the sphere of the mind and feelings, leading to compositions that are very different in their tone, and in the interaction between voice and piano. In Auf dem Wasser water is flowing, it is a fluid, dynamic, unstable, and vital element.

The text consists of three stanzas of six verses each (dactylic hendecasyllables). In the midst of the shimmering waves the rocking boat glides like a swan, and the soul glides away over the water like the boat. The reddening glow of the sunset pervades everything, and seems to beckon to the poet; you can hear the whispering of reeds in the wind, and the breath of the soul. With dewy wings, time escapes on the rocking waves, yesterday like today, and will continue to escape until the poet himself escapes the flow of time, flying away with towering, radiant wings. The softly measured, dactylic rhythm of a barcarolle, or boat song ( / × × / × × / × × / × ), generates a flowing, lullaby-like motion. A figure in the right hand – a rippled sixteenth-note sextuplet – runs through the whole piano accompaniment, lending an iridescent tone to the piece, by analogy with the reflection and the shimmering of water and its mobility. Yet, just like water, time flows. The image on which the composer focuses is therefore the similitude ‘flowing water / passing time’.

This Lied is in strophic form: the music of the first stanza is repeated in the other two. I will explain in a minute why Schubert chose to use this form. Meanwhile, I would like you to focus your listening on the repetition of the same music in all three stanzas, and on the sextuplet in the right hand, which pervades the whole piece.

Time – the poets says – escapes on the rocking waves, yesterday like today and tomorrow: time and water, then, flow incessantly, towards a future that coincides with the present, in an eternal repetition of the past. The uninterrupted, endless cyclical recurrence of natural elements invokes the representation of a perennial becoming, which however ultimately coincides with an eternal present. Now the strophic Lied form – an iterative form, which always repeats da capo, from the beginning, virtually unstoppable and unlimited – captures this natural process vividly, and gives us an evocative, realistic, sharp picture of it.

My second example, Frühlingstraum, is a six-stanza Lied on a text by Wilhelm Müller. It belongs to one of Schubert’s most important works: Winterreise, the “winter journey”, a coherent cycle of 24 Lieder assigned to a first person narrator, the Wanderer (a wayfarer). He makes his way through a desolate landscape, covered by snow and ice, sometimes coming across threatening animals. In Frühlingstraum, the eleventh Lied of the cycle, the framing theme is provided by the contrast between memory and the present, as the two are set in different landscapes. Once (first and fourth stanza) the Wanderer dreamt about a nature full of brightly colored flowers, just as if it were May; green meadows, the joyful tweeting of birds, the requited love of a beautiful young woman («ich träumte, ich träumte, ich träumte…»). The second and fifth stanzas describe the rude awakening of the protagonist at cockcrow («Da ward mein Auge wach… | Da ward mein Herze wach…»), a clear reference to the Gospels and the betrayal of Peter. Finally, in the cold darkness, ravens are heard cawing from the roofs. Here the threat comes from a persecutory aural perception («Es schrien…»). The birds, which in the dream were tweeting melodiously («lustiges Vogelgeschrei»), are replaced by roosters crowing, and then by ravens cawing. With reality suddenly setting in as soon as the protagonist awakes, the third and sixth stanza introduce the feeling of nostalgia, this time prompted by visual perceptions. The lacy crystals on frosted windows look like leaves, but who may have painted them? They are a trick, they only exist in the Wanderer’s imagination. The sphere of imagination and that of reality interfere with each other, through the feeling of nostalgia, Sehnsucht, which invades the heart: who knows when the Wanderer will see true leaves grow green again on the window sill? («Wann grünt, ihr Blätter, am Fenster?»).

An incredibly sweet prelude introduces the rocking pastoral melody of the first stanza. The pianist’s right hand “sings” in the high register: by synesthetic analogy, high tones suggest lightness, detachment from reality, or dream in this case. The soft dance rhythm also reinforces this dreamy atmosphere. In the first stanza, the singing melody is extremely soft, without sudden shifts or leaps. The accompaniment is light, and everything emanates grace and tranquility. The second stanza describes the protagonist as he wakes up with a start. All that is left is a few sparse chords, the lyrical singing is over and the voice spells out the text mechanically. There is a sharp transition from p to f. The third stanza begins with infinite melancholy after a pause that never seems to end. The moment of unveiling has come. The accompaniment has a faltering (limping) step, like somebody who pauses on things with a restless, alarmed look. The sleepy vision deceives the Wanderer into believing that the snow crystals are spring branches.

The sequence in the first three stanzas – a joyful sound environment, the coarse crowing of the rooster, the nostalgic illusion – repeats identically in the ensuing three stanzas. In the middle, a pause functions as a bridge. This Lied therefore has an ABC ABC form.

A lake landscape is the setting for one of the most disturbing, spectral Lieders of late Schubert: Die Stadt (The City), published posthumously in 1828. The author of the text is the Hamburg poet Heinrich Heine; the short composition (three quatrains) is included in the poem collection Die Heimkehr (The homecoming). The singer on his boat sees from afar, enshrouded in the twilight mist, the faded image of the city, with its towers - Heine most probably had in mind a sight of the towered city of Hamburg, reflected in the Alster lake at sunset: but Schubert never saw this view, he could only have pictured it in his mind while reading the verses of the poet. The leaden surface of the lake is rippled by a damp gust of wind («Ein feuchter Windzug kräuselt»), the rower rhythmically splashes the oar («mit traurigem Takte rudert»). But then one last sunray shines through the fog («Die Sonne hebt sich noch einmal»), and the landscape becomes clear and bright. But alas, with a stroke of the chilling wit that characterizes Heine’s style, that very ray hits, and lights up, the spot where the singer lost his beloved («und zeigt mir jene Stelle…»). Illusion and loss are closely intertwined in a real landscape, made of water, fog, sun and earth.

Right from the first bar, Schubert alludes to the shady water landscape, indeed he creates the sound image, both stagnant and vibrating, of a landscape caught in a troubled, dire fixedness. A whiplash of demisemiquavers in the right hand translates the gust of wind into sound; the chords express the rowing; and the tremolo in the left hand renders the gliding motion of the boat on the water. This meditative, impassible sound picture contrasts with the dry, sober, Abstract declamation of the first stanza, «Am fernen Horizonte», supported by somber, muffled chords. «Ein feuchter Windzug kräuselt» and we hear again the wind blowing, the water sloshing about against the boat’s sides. In the third stanza, where the sun appears again («Die Sonne hebt»), the Abstract declamation and heavy chords are back. Here Schubert emphasizes two terms, jene and Liebe (‘that’ and ‘love’), stressing how that very place, in that distant city, illuminated by the sun, is where the poet lost his love, his woman.

In this Lied, too, as in the previous one, reality and dream, pain and joy blend within the frame of an arcane, sinister landscape. In this case the Lied structure is A B A′.

My speech is drawing to a close. In the last two Lieder, Frühlingstraum and Die Stadt, the landscape provides a frame, an inner, intimate frame rather than a painterly one, in which to express the dialectical relationship between dream and reality, present and past, which is a pervasive theme in Schubert’s poetics. In the first Lied, Auf dem Wasser, the landscape is instead the essential means of representing, in sound, the eternal, cyclical recurrence of physical phenomena, the endless temporal dimension of the cosmos. However, there is one feature that is shared by all three Lieders, namely that the landscape is captured through the perspective of time, be it the objective time of Auf dem Wasser, or a subjective perception of time, as in the other two Lieders I have examined. The sense of time, after all, forms the very essence of human life, and also determines the way of looking at the natural setting. In its turn music, a temporal art by definition, is able to capture, with impressive vividness, the dynamism of passing time and its consequences on our existence. In these and in many other compositions, Schubert does this in a really sublime way.

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SESSION III
Environmental health and
people’s landscapes

Healthy people need a sound relationship to landscape

Bas Pedroli

Wageningen University & Research
e-mail: bas.pedroli@wur.nl

The title of this contribution might evoke the question: why would people need the landscape anyway? We buy food from landscapes all over the world we don’t even realise how they look like, we do enjoy nice landscapes from other parts of the world in our holidays and we support WWF to protect nature in other landscapes again, but we accept there is a certain urgency in building roads and houses in the landscapes at home. It seems we can live without the landscape nearby, provided there still are landscapes further away. Interestingly, if these landscapes on their turn are not taken care of by the people living in those places, also these landscapes far away will not survive. Landscapes without people bothering about them are no living landscapes anymore.

Of course, the urban landscapes where 80% of European people today live, are also landscapes. But we don’t realise they are, and the discussion is much more about public space than about landscape. Once there are problems with youngsters or conflicts between social groups in a neighbourhood, the municipality will take measures in the public space. It is clear that healthy urban conditions include an environment where people feel themselves at home. Such measures of fostering public goods are much less taken in the countryside. Still, most people have a strong sense of belonging to particular types of landscape, often reminding very much of the landscape of their youth, be it urban or rural. Apparently many people have identified themselves with the landscapes of their childhood, even when these were just living landscapes of everyday. While loving beautiful, exotic landscapes for leisure or holiday, they return to such type of landscape to really feel at home.

So: what is a sound relationship with landscape? Like with every relationship, a good relationship is one that is reciprocal. Landscape is a public good – one can’t own the landscape – and people do have the right to enjoy the landscape; at the same time this brings responsibilities in taking care for the landscape, at least by not compromising landscape values. Things people are not committed to are generally not taken care of very well. Degraded landscapes, non-places, lead to people deprived of their cultural identity. That is one of the reasons why it is so difficult for migrating people to feel at home in their new, involuntarily chosen asylum landscapes. The more it is important to join in taking part in landscape management and build up a new sense of belonging.

Main challenge of landscape management for the future – allowing for a sound relationship of people with the landscape – is how to cope with market failure in taking care of landscape quality and envisage community-based place-making to provide for new commons and a wide range of benefits for everybody, inhabitants and visitors alike. Landscape research should contribute to reconcile the opportunities for cultural identity and the needs of people for a sense of belonging, by facilitating active landscape observatory functions and fostering a debate about visionary landscape strategies towards the future.

The health benefits of urban green spaces

Andrew Lee

Public Health, School of Health and Related Research,
The University of Sheffield
e-mail: andrew.lee@sheffield.ac.uk

The notion that urban greenspace is good for one’s health feels intuitively right. But is it an urban myth, a reflection of the human condition that is inclined to appreciating natural beauty, or are the health benefits real?

A wide range of benefits have been suggested ranging from impacts on cardiovascular health, restorative effects on stress and mental wellbeing, post-operative recovery, to even effects on mortality. Indeed, much of the research in the early years has been on trying to demonstrate these health benefits and focused on the search for associations between characteristics of the urban green space and various health outcomes. These are manifest in many different ways and research questions: questions of how much greenspace is enough, how accessible or proximate does it have to be, how much ‘green space visibility’ is needed and what are the characteristics required? However, these efforts have been dogged by a significant flaw – the logic models underlining these have been overly simplistic. Many assume a linear relationship that by providing a certain amount of greenspace of a certain quality and distance from residents, it will lead to population health benefits.

It is well recognized that greenspaces are heterogeneous areas ranging from fields, gardens, allotments, to wild woodland. There is also considerable diversity of activity that takes place in greenspaces: be it areas for physical exercise, sports and games, gardening, to social contact spaces. Likewise the urban populations are equally diverse, in terms of socioeconomic and demographic profiles: people are different in many ways for age, gender, ethnic heritage, culture, literacy, employment, and faiths. Furthermore, as recently reported by some researchers, health benefits vary across the lifecourse, i.e. there are differential effects at different points in the life course

There is also the issue of attribution – greenspace research has assumed that individual and population health outcomes are mainly attributable to the greenspace. The reality is health outcomes have multiple determinants (including genetics, upbringing, lifestyles and the wider social determinants). The strength and immediacy of these determinants also vary considerably. For example, air pollution and pollen levels may have strong and direct effects on people’s health in the short term, whilst the benefit from physical activity (or lack of) may have small effect sizes that manifest gradually over decades.

Is it no wonder then that greenspace research into health benefits have found such diverse and at times conflicting results? It would also be inappropriate to assume that any associations found are causal when we do not understand the mechanism by which the outcomes are generated. We cannot treat ‘greenspaces’ like a medico therapeutic intervention, a ‘greenspace pill’, that has a standard composition and we would be naïve to expect a predictable effect. It is also too simplistic to assume that urban populations are homogeneous and comparable across the world and that greenspace interventions and outcomes can be easily replicated. As Hartig et al (2014) argue, these interactions are complex.

We propose adopting a different approach to studying the health benefits of greenspaces, drawing on the realist evaluation and synthesis approach as proposed by Pawson et al. We need to understand the contexts in which greenspace use takes place and explore the mechanisms by which health benefits may emerge. We suggest that it is the ‘functionality’ of the greenspace that probably matters most, i.e. how it is used, that leads to the health outcomes seen.

For example, one mechanism proposed is that greenspaces act as a ‘promoter of social interactions and active lifestyles’. Various researchers have described the role greenspaces have in supporting physical activity and especially walking. Likewise, the effect of greenspaces on neighbourhood trust , social capital, social isolation and loneliness is increasingly recognized, especially for older persons. This is probably because greenspaces provide public spaces for social interactions to take place.

Consequently, if we want to augment the health benefits of greenspaces that arises from increased physical activity, we need to design and develop greenspaces with that purpose in mind: through improving access, adequacy of size of space for games/sports, and facilitative features such as fitness zones/outdoor gyms, walking/cycling paths, lighting, and playgrounds. Furthermore, efforts are needed to promote this sort of activity e.g. through marketing and signage. Physical activity programs combined with built environment changes are more likely to produce the positive results sought.

A recent review by Roberts et al (2018) also provided further insights into how we can optimise greenspace use. This included physical environment interventions (e.g. new fitness equipment, upgrading the play area, BBQ area, walking track, landscaped gardens) and social environment interventions (e.g. use of green space marketed through outreach events, meetings with residents, signage). Material incentives can lead to a 7-12% increase in use, but also community involvement – it was reported in one study that 109 of 120 spaces that received community-co-designed interventions saw increase in use.

Finally, it is also important to consider the environmental justice implications of these interventions. It is known that urban greenspaces disproportionately benefits predominantly White and affluent communities. There is also the phenomenon of ‘park poverty’ present especially in deprived neighbourhoods. More and better urban greenspaces can increase house prices, leading to gentrification of urban areas that may worsen access to greenspace to those who need it and are likely to benefit most from it. Urban greenspace developments do not take place in a context-less vacuum, but in a cauldron of competing social and political voices and priorities. It is therefore important to strengthen the evidential basis for urban greenspace interventions, and, from a public health perspective, to address inequity issues that may be present.

The evolution of landscapes: The human factor in a transfrontier case study in Karelia (Finland / Russia)

Juanjo Galan Vivas1, Felix Bourgeau2

1Aalto University, Espoo, 02150, Finland;
2Aalto University, Espoo, 02150, Finland
e-mail: Juanjo.galan@aalto.fi

Abstract

In 1859, Charles Darwin formulated his theory of evolution (“On the Origin of Species”) after observing how physical barriers between different environments led to the generation of different species. Using this principle, this paper elaborates on how human frameworks and even, tangible o intangible barriers might produce the divergence or convergence of landscapes.

This was the central topic of a studio course organized by the Aalto University Landscape Architecture programme in 2017 on both sides of the Karelian border, whose methods and results support the argumentation of this paper.

Karelia was part of the same administrative and cultural unit but following the end of the Second World War, it was divided between Finland and Russia with the subsequent appearance of different socio-cultural, demographic, economic, political and planning contexts on both sides of the frontier. The paper describes how these new conditions affected the character of its urban, agricultural, natural, industrial and infrastructural landscapes, their formal patterns, the distribution and interaction between different land uses, the linkages between people and landscape and the integration in the landscape of historic layers, present realities and future visions.

Keywords: landscape planning, landscape evolution, cultural landscape, transfrontier landscapes, landscape transformation

Introduction

The studio course “Cultural Landscapes: the evolution of Karelian landscapes” explored the concept of cultural landscape, not as a particular type of designated and delimited landscape, but as the cultural dimension of any landscape.

The concept of Cultural landscape was therefore perceived as the evolving expression of the interaction of the human being with the environment (ELC, 2000); and the traces, physical patterns, social structures, productive systems and cultural meanings that the individuals or the collectives create, as a consequence of human activity and presence in any given territory.

The course was activated with a very simple analogy and with a set of questions. In 1835 Charles Darwin arrived to the Galapagos Islands and was astonished with “the number of their aboriginal beings, and at their confined range… Hence, both in space and time, we seem to be brought somewhere near to that great fact, that mystery of mysteries –the appearance of the new beings on this earth (1845)”. Continuing with this analogy, the course on Cultural Landscape formulated the following questions: Can two close places with similar natural conditions and similar human backgrounds evolve into different landscapes?, How does it happen?, What remains and what stays?.

In order to answer those questions it was decided to work on both sides of the Karelian border to assess how the division in 1945 and the subsequent social, economic and political transformations affected the character of its landscapes. That exploration would help us to understand the “cultural” factor behind the landscape by approaching the landscape as a human construct in which human decisions determine its evolution.

The study of borders has undergone a renaissance during the previous decades (Newman, 2006) and according to Isachenko (2009), “transboundary landscapes are the territories most prone to change”. Therefore, the Karelian studio was a relevant choice combining both topics: borders and landscape. A chronological dimension was added assuming that “every epoch and culture makes its own material impact on the landscape” (Jones, 1999).

Materials and Methods

The course was structured in three different phases. Firstly, the participants were engaged in a theoretical research about the cultural dimension of the landscape. The second phase included a comparative analysis of different types of landscapes around the Karelian border and was supported by a road trip to Imatra, Rautjärvi, Simpele, Parikkala, Punkaharju, Kitee in Finland and to Varstila, Ruskeala, Rytty, Laskela, Sortavala, Lahdenpoja, Lumivaaara, Kurkijoki, Kuznechnoye, Priozersk, Melnikovo and Svetogorsk in Russia. During the third phase, the students chose a specific type of area or topic in order to explore more in depth the cultural dimension of the landscape and to propose a set of strategies and management tools.

The comparative study of landscapes was based on the analysis of historical and current cartographies, in the study of aerial pictures, in the consultation of photographic archives and in the fieldwork that was developed in February 2017. The fieldtrip was essential to develop diagrammatic maps, synthetic sketches and sections as well as to meet and interview local people who, through their memories, experiences and ways of living, provided priceless information about the evolution of the Karelian landscape.

Most of the work was developed in a qualitative level and was based on the study of comparable areas, villages, towns or topics.

Results and Discussion

The comparative study of the evolution of the landscape on both sides of the Karelian border suggests that the appearance of two contrasting socio-politic, economic and cultural systems after 1945 had a clear and sharp effect in its formal structure, character and management.

Thus, in addition to the preexisting differences -caused mainly by biophysical reasons- the change in the distribution of land uses and landcovers; in the management of productive landscapes; in the systems of land ownership and in the elements and patterns defining the character of the urban and rural landscape, changed radically on both sides of the frontier. Logically, these changes were associated with different ways of living that affected the types of interactions between population and environment.

Usually, the most inhabited areas presented a complex mosaic of land uses and land covers, whose evolution was highly driven by global or national forces that amplified or attenuated local factors (Lambin et al, 2001).

As displayed in Figure 1 (Nylund, L. Himberg, J & Virijaroj, B, 2017), the general factors which where influencing the transformation of the landscape before 1945 (e.g. transport systems and infrastructures, industrialization, agricultural and forestry practices, building types and urban patterns, etc.), diverged after the division of Karelia.

Kolkhozes and bigger agricultural plots appeared to the East, medium size and compact towns planned with functionalist and modernist criteria grew in the Russian side, whilst traditional villages and rural/architectural heritage declined or stayed frozen in time. On the Finnish side, the development of transport infrastructures, together with private land ownership, promoted a more scattered urban pattern. Moreover, livestock farming practically disappeared in the West with the subsequent effect in meadows. Forestry was developed according to different principles on both sides of the border with a significant consequence in the character and scale of the natural landscape.

Figure 1: Diagrammatic representation of the evolution of the Karelian landscape on both sides of the border (Nylund, L. Himberg, J & Viriyaroj, B, 2017)

In a prospective approach, students tried to visualize the future evolution of the landscape after the introduction of a capitalist economy in Russia. At this point, it was understood that Finnish Karelia, as part of Finland and the European Union, and Russian Karelia, as part of the Russian Federation, still operate in two different systems separated also by a considerable income per capita gap (36.000 € per capita in Finland versus 17.000 € per capita in Russia).

The use of GIS information (landcovers) in comparable natural, rural and urban sites on both sides of the border confirmed the qualitative differences observed on the field, maps and aerial pictures. In general, Finnish landscapes presented a smaller grain size that affected the level of fragmentation or connectivity of the landscape (see Figure 2).

In addition, the study of cities, towns and small villages evidenced also the consequences of the Karelian division and, interestingly, indicated higher levels of dependence and interaction between Russian settlements and their peri-urban fringes.

Figure 2: Land cover patterns around a Finnish Karelian town (left) and a Russian Karelian town (right) (Nylund, L. Himberg, J & Viriyaroj, B, 2017)

Conclusions

The results of the studio course suggested that landscape character and structure in trans-frontier landscapes can be particularly affected by different socio-political, economic and cultural frameworks. The methods and the qualitative results produced during the studio course, indicates the interest of advancing in comparative and chronological landscape studies as a way to understand the drivers and mechanisms affecting their transformation. Those advanced studies could incorporate a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods involving the assessment of land cover changes (e.g. digital analysis of aerial/satellite pictures and maps), the study of the basic elements, processes and practices conforming the landscape, as well as the consequences of their modification, aggregation and interaction. This systemic approach should combine top-down and bottom-up procedures and be informed by the socio-cultural, economic and planning frameworks driving or regulating the transformations of landscapes.

Acknowledgments

To all the students from the Aalto Programmes on Landscape Architecture Programme, Creative Sustainability and Architecture who made this course possible.

Living the city-landscape
Environmental health, regulation and urban design

Margherita Vanore, Massimo Triches

Università Iuav di Venezia, Dipartimento di Culture del Progetto, Venezia, 30121, Italy;
e-mail: vanorem@iuav.it - massimotriches@iuav.it

Abstract

The construction and regeneration of cities has in the centuries followed different models and strategies that are not always adequate today to define a widespread quality, that is understood as an expression of a healthy and liveable environment.These models are founded and have given rise to a complex regulatory system, on national, regional and local levels, which although aimed to achieve determined living standards, often turn into projects that are not able of interpreting existing or future needs of health, sustainability and quality of our cities and in particular of their shared urban spaces.

The welfare and wellbeing of contemporary city are in the centre of an articulated interdisciplinary debate whose vocabulary has progressively been enriched by words and concepts such as smart cities, participated process, quality of life, sustainability and health. These issues are often analysed and observed from specialist points of view, that provide partial diagnoses related to the state of cities’ health, useful for defining comparisons and classifications, but not adequate to describe the quality of the spaces we live.

There is a therapeutic potential of the city-landscapes, which is possible to express through the same character of urban sites and in the quality of architectural design of shared urban spaces. The health status of these places may be represented and analysed in order to define good practices and possibly a set of “smart rules” able to accompany the urban project in all its phases and scales of development.

In order to improve built environment quality, promoting healthy lifestyles, the urban design has the duty to re-establish an integral vision of cities with their landscapes, recomposing architectures, open spaces, mobility systems, productive spaces and green/blue infrastructures in a sustainable, balanced and alive environment.

Keywords: urban design; landscape; environmental health; design rules, shared spaces.

Introduction

The welfare and wellbeing of contemporary city are in the centre of an articulated interdisciplinary debate whose vocabulary has progressively been enriched by words and concepts such as smart cities, participated process, quality of life, sustainability and health. These issues are often analysed and observed from specialist points of view, that provide partial diagnoses related to the state of cities’ health, useful for defining comparisons and classifications, but not adequate to describe the quality of the spaces we live.

Renewing the knowledge of the city, also by updating a comparison between urban models and lifestyles, today imposes a disciplinary integration able to investigate and intercept the parallels between the body health and the health of the territory.

Materials and methods

The urban environmental health, which we aim to recognize as “common good”, necessarily relates to the morphological, social and cultural characters of the territory. Factors of density and proximity, indeed, reflect themselves in it, as well as the availability of services and facilities, but it’s hard to bring the urban health only to measurable determinants, across numerical data which form the basis of several reports on the quality of life.

An ongoing research project, at the Department of Architecture and Arts in the Università Iuav di Venezia, relates the condition of well-being with an extension of the concept of living the city to that of living the city-landscape, focusing on multidisciplinary and trans-scalar aspects in the project of urban open spaces.

In the prefiguration of a city-landscape, two words are composed taking turns in the definition of both the phenomena. They are two terms that include cultural and physical facts, taking, in their complexity, a positive connotation linked to their being collective works.

From the city-landscape you can also recognize a specific project strategy, showing the living dimension and the lifestyles of people, confronted with structures and systems extended to the territory. This may be reflected in the welfare conditions of the human body through a sharing, whether searched or required.

Hence the interest lies with the specific urban design ability to integrate different branches of knowledge to improve environmental and citizens health. This is expressed by the redefinition of the extended and articulated infrastructural systems, with a greater intensity of values and potentials both in the using and in the building of places as part of the city.

Sharing refers to a public or collective use of spaces, that may be both in private or public areas. Uses which are also featured by a specific ability of hybridization, variability and adaptability of urban places.

The research goal is to define how the contemporary project can determine the care of the shared space, developing an appropriate equipment for in-depth knowledge and updated, both of the morphological structural characters of urban phenomena, and of the processes and practices.

Reading the city in this sense, shows us also some good practices, that are testing the hybridization of types and adaptive capacity of sites, in order to accommodate many functions and comply in relation to specific services or activities. The spaces of the city are then defined in their ability to be simultaneously more than a thing. They adapt their nature and conformation to a flexibility that requires to overcome the two dimensions, of a border line or of a demarcation line, between what is public and what is private.

A specific interest lies in those places recognized as urban shared spaces, that are today experiencing a significant contamination: green streets, urban rooms and inhabited thresholds. Places that assume variables trims and different roles allowing various mobility, at different speeds and with different means, but especially in a balanced articulation, able to supply multiple possibilities and urban activities.

The vitality of the space for public and collective use, in relation to various seasonal and temporal conditions, requires a consideration of environmental issues with what constitutes the character and the cityscape from which the actual, or potential, urban wellbeing derives.

Lifestyles are clearly fed by shared space construction and it is well established that the infrastructure for the slow mobility support [fig.1], walking and biking, but we need to overcome the logic of their inclusion as a simple equipment, necessary and indifferent, standardized and often channelled into seats that do not integrate into the urban context of reference.

The demand for slow mobility is interpreted as a redevelopment of the shared space. To that effect, from the action of equipping the areas available for bicycle and pedestrian paths, the strategy focuses on the potential expressed by a proper conformation of an infrastructural work acting by dynamic ecological systems, capable of providing new services and spaces for the city. Results and discussion

The research, started in 2017, had its first event in Venice in December of the same year, with the International Conference “Living the city-landscape. Environmental health, rules and urban design” [fig.2], followed by the first research workshop “curecity1: Venice-Marghera roundtrip”.

The work is today developing itself through studies also supported by design experimentations at various levels, as part of a master degree in architecture, among integrated and multidisciplinary atelier and final degree projects.

In the same definition of the city-landscape we introduce the goal of reinterpreting the legal framework conforming the systems of shared open spaces in a more “intelligent”, in terms of “smart rules” that could be equally adaptive and be specified in relation to the different levels of progress, in order to respond to objectives expressed through clear performance indicators.

Conclusions 

In order to improve built environment quality, promoting healthy lifestyles, the urban design has the duty to re-establish an integral vision of cities with their landscapes, recomposing architectures, open spaces, mobility systems, productive spaces and green/blue infrastructures in a sustainable, balanced and alive environment.

Acknowledgments

Università Iuav di Venezia, prof. arch. Margherita Vanore.

Radicepura Garden Festival

Fondazione Radicepura,

Radicepura, Giarre, 95014, Italy;
E-mail: events@radicepura.com

Keywords: Landscape #1; Gardening #2; Horticulture #3; Architecture #4; Art #5;

Abstract

Radicepura is a unique horticultural-science park designed to enhance the authenticity of nature with the most innovative technology with a key focus on eco-friendly activities.

Nestled between Mount Etna (UNESCO Heritage Site) and the Ionian sea, Radicepura Park, with its ongoing projects, reached the highest point in 2017 when the Radicepura Garden Festival and the new botanical park have been disclosed to the public.

The Radicepura Garden Festival is the first international garden design event in the heart of the Mediterranean area that gathers together institutions, associations, new talents, great artists, landscapers and architects of this nation-wide and international territory.

The Festival has been conceived with the purpose of recognizing the importance of nature as a development engine for the planet, through initiatives, events and cultural languages: from music to artistic installations, from horticulture to food and wine events. Sicily has always been a melting pot of people, civilizations and various cultures around the Mediterranean and therefore it is one of the most interesting places to illustrate the importance of the relationship between man and the environment, reflecting a sense of place and community.

Radicepura Garden Festival winds up and down various gardens and design settings. It starts with the surreal artificial garden that combines human creativity and beauty of nature. Along the footpaths, it is possible to admire contemporary artistic installations, the educational vegetable garden, natural lawns, the modern tropical greenhouse, the square and the belvedere. Guests can also enjoy their time in our equipped gastronomic areas.

Our garden design differs from traditional outdoor architectures or plant-based businesses, conceiving a new way to interact with space.

Spread and valorize the culture of natural landscape are pivotal elements for RadicePura. The garden becomes a new habitat where the potential of open space finds its greenest way.

Some stats from the first edition:

14 Gardens

4 Internationa garden designer Michel Penà, Stefano Passerotti, James Basson, Kamelia Bin Zaal and

6 Young landscape Architects chosen by an international call for ideas

2 Gardens Parters: Kolymbethra ancient garden (Agrigento, Valle dei Templi) and Palermo’s Horticulture Park

6 Partenership with European University

3 Travelling Gardens: La macchia to Norcia, L’Anmorphose from Paris, Il Giardino Italia from Milan

2000 plants and essence

+50kg biological vegetables produced by Mediterranean diet hort.

180 days of Festival

30k visitors from 20 different countries

5k children

150 people engaged

+50 sponsor and partner

1,5k press publications

2 exhibition

2 catalogs

1 watercolor book by Lucia Scuderi

Radicepura will also host artists and shows.

Two Sicilian artists: Emilio Isgrò and Alfio Bonanno built architectures specifically for the festival; the Collicaligreggi Gallery will handle a photographic show linked with the botanic world. During all the festival, a packed agenda with appointments will analyse through workshops, conversations and walks the suggested theme in the Festival.

Now is possible visit the exhibition of Federico Baronello “The plural always overtake the singular” until the end of October. Strongly connected with Braudel’s thought, Federico Baronello presents three new works on the Mediterranean Sea, an area of intertwined contaminations where many ambitions shatter along its coasts. Two diagrams, installed in the outdoor spaces of the Radicepura Foundation, will be used to catch “impressions” like a photocamera. These impressions will later be arranged together inside Radicepura Foundation’s venue. The exibition will finish with a series of incisions-photos depicting botanical species, tipically from the Mediterranean, threatened by bacteria and parasites. The botanical species are photographed from far above, a different point of view from the standard garden fruition, as if external agents looking at plants, threaten their existence, unveiling, at the same time, landscapes of the production chains, well suggesting an aesthetic look towards modernity without any deceptive simulations and unproductive past interpretations.

The series called “Palm weevil bacteria” is the last reference to the history of photograph of this exhibition: fantastic and fleeting gardens by the father of surrealists, Eugène Atget.

The Festival inside the Festival. The Radicepura Foundation also launched the Garden-in-Movies. It is determined to grow, by proposing movie novelties, identifying new talents and promoting unreleased and experimental works. So, starting from the second edition, the Festival launches the Garden-in-Movies/ShortFilmFest, international short film competition, in agreement with the founding spirit of the main Film Festival.

The Garden-in-Movies, aims at enhancing, through Cinema, nature, landscape, ecology and environment as a driving force of development and contamination, in an all-round vision that goes beyond the narrow concept of “garden”. According this vision, the international short film competition Garden-in-Movies/ShortFilmFest is targeted at all those works in which, through the language of cinema, the “garden” becomes a metaphor for every place, context, dynamic, relationship able to cultivate and develop cultural, political, social and artistic values.

As for as the second edition of the Radicepura Garden Festival, that will be in 2019,

Now Radicepura announces an international competition to select architects, landscapers, designers under 35 years old that will create 10 temporary gardens with the theme “Productive Gardens”. The theme of useful, productive gardens is still widely present today: a green space which yields fruits, flowers, biodiversity, scents, emotions, oxygen, relax, fun, restoring energy, is an evergreen archetype. For this reason, the proposed theme for the 2019 Garden Festival edition is the Productive garden which conbines in an original way, for the man of the third millennium, the ancestral need for utility with the new aesthetic needs of the contemporary society.

The gardens will be judged by an international panel of experts chaired by Sarah Eberle. Participants will have the opportunity to choose the plants from Piante Faro greenhouses and cultivations, which means a production of over 800 species and more than 5000 varieties of exotic, succulent and ornamental plants, rare trees, unique majestic thousands year old specimens. Over 200 projects from 10 different countries originated by calls for ideas. The jury, composed by Sarah Eberle with Jordi Bellmunt, Carmela Canzonieri, Daniela Romano, Franco Livoti and Pablo Georgieff, selected six participants for the first edition.

All new information at www.radicepurafestival.com

Session III - References

ELC European Landscape Convention (2000), Council of Europe

sachenko, T.; (2009); “Cultural Landscape Dynamics of Transboundary Areas: A Case Study of the Karelian Isthmus”; Journal of Borderlands Studies, 24:2, 78-91

Jones. M; (1991); “The elusive reality of landscape. Concepts and approaches in landscape research”; Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography, 45:4 229-244

Lambin et al., (2001) “The causes of land-use and land-cover change: moving beyond the myths”; Global Environmental Change 11, 261-269

Newman, D; (2005), “The lines that continue to separate us: borders in our “borderless” world”, Progress in Human Geography 30:2, 143-161

Barton, H. (2017). City of Well-Being: A Radical Guide to Planning. London and New York: Routledge.

Galdini, R. (2017). Terapie urbane. I nuovi spazi pubblici della città contemporanea. Catanzaro: Rubbettino

Gehl, J. (1987). Life Between Buildings: Using Public Space (transl. by Kock, J.). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Lotus international n°150 (2012). Landscape urbanism. Milano: Editoriale Lotus.

SESSION IV
Built system and urban regeneration

Integrated planning and design of summer baths (natural baths and natural swimming-pools) in the urban space – potentials for a sustainable urban development

Dr. Christine Fuhrmann

Brandenburg University of Technology of Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU)
Chair of Landscape Architecture
e-mail: Christine.Fuhrmann@b-tu.de

Keywords: sustainable urban development #1 climate and environment protection; concepts Blue Green cities

Abstract

Natural outdoor pool concepts have developed in the German-speaking area for many years to a fixed type of pools and have become an established alternative to classical outdoor swimming pools with chemical water treatment.

The focus of the exploration are natural river and lake baths as well as natural swimming pools (outdoor pools with biological water treatment). Central areas of action of the study are:

-Integrated design concepts for sustainable summer baths

-Assessment of the ecosystem services

-Contribution to the water protection (good water quality with regard to the EU Water Framework Directive)

-Contribution to the climate protection (urban climatic relief, concepts Blue Green cities)

-Identification of new utilisation concepts (strategy of a multicoding use) for a sustainable urban development

Summer baths represent a big resource of urban green space and fulfil therefore charitable, building cultural and ecological functions and contribute essentially to the climate and environment protection as well as to the sustainable urban development. Summer baths are social and healthy. They are areas of experience, movement and recreation.

To be able to build and run well functioning and attractive outdoor swimming pools of this kind in the long term, special knowledge and experiences are necessary in different disciplines, in particular concerning filtration, limnology and fluid mechanics as well as open space utilization and planting design.

Hence, architects, landscape architects, engineers, limnologists, executing companies and future operators should be involved from the beginning of the planning and during the operation of the baths. Actually, the planning and design is often aimed selectively on single aspects like water-technical, hygienic and functional aspects.

A comprehensive exploration (survey) of innovative examples of natural baths with biological water treatment and their contribution to achieve the European targets for the sustainable urban development, environment and climate protection is so far a desideratum in research.

The research project presented is realized by a trans-disciplinary project team (landscape architecture, urban design, architecture, urban technology, water technology, resource economy) at the Brandenburg University of Technology of Cottbus-Senftenberg (BTU).

Introduction 

More than 7000 summer baths in Germany represent a large resource of urban green and open spaces. They serve recreation, nature protection and relief for the urban climate. They are an integral part of the built environment.

Independent from the fact if the baths were built in the 1920s or in the second half of the 20th century, 350 had to be closed down during the last ten years, other 700 are in strong need of rehabilitation. Often cities and other communities cannot bear any more the costs for personnel and materials. In times of tight communal budgets more and more communities rebuild their summer baths to natural outdoor pools, mainly to save costs.

Scientific research concerning the cost-effectiveness of operating a natural outdoor pool relative to operating a conventional outdoor pool don’t exist so far.While the baths fulfil multiple requirements during the summer months, they are usually not open to the public during the whole year. Instead of an one-dimensional assignment open air swimming pools could – in the sense of a “multi-coding” – fulfil social, ecological, economical and technical functions simultaneously.

The planned study references also the recommended actions of the German Ministry of Environment, Nature Protection, Building and Reactor Security for more greed in our cities that were published with the so-called “Weißbuch Grün” in 2017.

Materials and methods

The study is divided into four modules

-Search and systematic compilation of natural baths and outdoor swimming pools with biological water treatment in Germany, Austria and Switzerland

-Reflection of the collected results in a first expert talk as well as three expertises concerning special aspects of the planning and design of outdoor swimming pools with biological water treatment

-Case study research and formulation of recommended actions for the planning of natural baths and outdoor swimming pools with biological water treatment

-Documentation of results and reflection in a second expert talk

-Kick-Off Workshop

The research project starts with a kick-off workshop. It shall enable the project team to work together target-oriented at an early stage.

-Nationwide Search phase

The search phase follows different work paths: assessment of available materials in form of scientific literature and Internet research, targeted interviews of key persons in communal planning, science and other professionals, an online survey of cities with a population higher than 20.000 inhabitants, and a call for projects to smaller cities on appropriate Internet platforms and via subject-specific publications (professional associations and forums).

-Systematization

A selection of projects that are exemplary for an integrated planning and design of outdoor swimming pools with biological water treatment will be documented systematically and analyzed intensely.

-Selection of case studies

From the collected projects about 20 will be selected for deeper analysis in case studies. The selection will be done reflecting different design and planning approaches as well as conflicts, barriers and success factors during the realization, considering different sizes of cities with different development dynamics (growing, shrinking) in an appropriate regional distribution.

Essential for the selection of projects is the fitness of the 20 case studies for general findings and the development of transferable recommendations.

Results and discussion

Goal of the study is to create a solid information base of success factors and barriers on different planning and operating levels via a detailed research on completed and work-in-progress projects and the inclusion of external experts. The potential of integrated development approaches for summer baths as part of a sustainable urban development shall be identified. Recommendations for local authorities and interested parties for an integrated planning and design of summer baths in urban spaces that are fit for the future shall be developed.

The research considers the integrated new development of outdoor swimming pools with biological water treatment as well as the upgrading of rivers or lakes though natural bath concepts. Integrated means in this context the integration in the local context and a trans-disciplinary planning approach.

Other targes are:

-Build-up and development of a trans-disciplinary project team (scientists from the BTU, staff from public administration, from professional associations, societies etc.)

-Promotion of the awareness for natural baths and natural swimming pools

-Promotion of the awareness for the protection of climate, rivers and lakes as well as of building environment and culture (Baukultur)

Conclusions

From the current status of research emerge two key areas: The first lies in planning, building, maintenance and operation of outdoor swimming pools with biological water treatment, the second in limnology and water quality. An integrated planning and design of summer baths in urban spaces in contrast poses a claim that can only be solved through the cooperation of different disciplines on different scales. A pure engineering, water-technical or limnologic point of view is not sufficient any more. Therefore, the faculty already works during the current early phase of the project on the build-up and development of a trans-disciplinary and cross-actor project team.

From productive sites to healthy landscape
pro-duction

Elisa Baldin

1Lab VTP, Faculté d’Architecture, Université de Liège, Liège, 4000, Belgium;
2LACTH, ENSAPL, Villeneuve d’Ascq, 59650, France;
E-mail: Elisa.Baldin@uliege.be

Abstract

Remediation is one of the main issues in recovering industrial sites, as a healthy environment is the base for a healthy living. The interest in studying alternative methods such as phytoremediation and bioremediation techniques is based on the possibilities offered by these IN SITU techniques, to integrate biological dynamics, environmental engineering with the landscape design practices. In this way remediation represents an integrated redevelopment process (Kirkwood, 2001) where the materials and characters of the site are reinterpreted as sources for new pro-ductive activities. Referring to the Latin form “pro-ducere” as a revealing action (Heidgger, 1953), where technique makes (visible) “new elements”, in the case of the former industrial sites, production is a continuum - from the industrial settlement, to the recovering phase - marking the identity of these productive sites. Nevertheless these soft remediation techniques shift from a static outcome towards a regenerative one. The PhD research, developed at Labo Pay(S)age (Université de Liège), concerns the regenerative design strategies as pro-duction of new landscapes, where landscape design approach accompanies the change of the site. Through a comparison between recovered sites in Northern France and Walloon regions, the research, aims to question the spatial and landscape qualities introduced by these soft reclamation techniques.

The paper describes the lagunage de Harnes as a case study where the landscape design strategy uses phytoremediation techniques both as metabolic device and new landscape pattern. The former coal mine, transformed into a water treatment plant shows how regeneration can be read in biological, territorial and cultural dimensions. The paper discusses the relationship between remediation technique and landscape design as complementary elements operating the shift from productive site to a healthy landscape production.

Keywords: integrated redevelopment process / regeneration strategies/ productive sites/ healthy landscape production

Introduction 

Deindustrialisation along the coal basin between Nord-pas de Calais and Walloon regions has marked the cross-border area with a constellation of abandoned industrial sites. Although the two Regions share territorial and historical characters, different strategies are adopted to recover their industrial heritage. From the earliest tree planting programs in the 80’s to the recent regional recovery strategies, in the French region the landscape value of these sites has become a territorial regenerative lever. Mission Bassin Minier et Euralens organisations has developed recovery program and realisations based on the concept of “paysage culturel evolutif et vivant”, where the territorial renewal is activated on the respect of the industrial heritage. In this perspective the site of Harnes reveals in continuity with the past as a productive site, but also in evolution because the new technique (phytoremediation) integrated into new activities (water treatment and park) have enhanced landscape local characters.

Materials and methods

The site of Harnes, located in the urban agglomeration of Lens-Lievin, takes its name from the ancient marsh along the Lens watercourse. From 1896 to 1968 the site has been exploited as a coal mine (fosse n. 9 et 17). After demolition and 30 years of abandon the site was recovered. The reconfiguration of the site makes it interesting for its double nature of water treatment system and public space. The project, designed by Agence Paysage in collaboration with BERIM and BURGEAP engineering studios,and F.U.L. University, consists of a system of basins where a phytoremediation technique, named MHEA (mosaique hiérarchisé d’écosystèmes artificiels) completes the clean-up of water by the filtering action of aquatic vegetation. The site is also conceived as a public park where people can walk and rediscover a space of nature.

Therefore, the study of the site concerns two dimensions/scales.

1) As a water treatment system the questioning is about the remediation technique, its elements, processes, temporality, limiting factors, new productive sectors, the impact of the new use of the site in the urban system.

2) As a public park, observation are aimed at: the presence of ecologically different milieux and their accessibility through spatial structures, the permeability of the site in relation to the territory, the frequency of the users’ presence, the diversification of users, the reuse of existing elements as memory/cultural activators.

These characters are analysed through:

- Observations on-site in different seasons;

- Documentation about the project and the site;

- Interview with actors of the design and management of the site;

- Interview with users by walking and talking along the site;

A following but iterative phase consists of the interpretation of the collected data in relation to a theoretical framework concerning the relationship between pro-duction and the landscape design approach in the reclaiming of the site (Corner, 1999). Finally, I experiment the description of the site as a music narrative by using the notation to represent the evolving relation to the soil in time.

Results and discussion

The water tertiary treatment device represents a regenerative system (Lyle, 1994), where the reclaim action is done using ecological processes (phyto-remediation). In the sequenced basins, willows and alders operates the absorption of phosphorous and nitrogen. Then water is progressively purified by Typha angustifolia, Phragmites australis, Scirpus lacustris and Iris pseudacorus.

The system is completed by some mechanical elements such as the wind turbines, activating an oxygenation process, and a ditch, leading water to the final swim basin. This last has not be realized, in relation to complex topography variations. In fact, the balance and functioning of this delicate system require a rigorous management. Although the goal of water quality has not been achieved at 100%, in the last section water is present as a trace, activating wet environment biotopes, and unexpected and lush milieux. The variety of ambiances and a richness of fauna and flora make the site environmentally interesting.

The park is used almost by citizens, groups of students, and some local visitors in the week end: people of different ages coming to visit the Harnes lagoon for different reasons. Many people come from the neighbourhood to have a walk in a quiet place, coming in little groups or with their dogs. There are also didactic visits, explaining the artificial wetland and its biodiversity (eco-citizenship program). The site is also used as sport area, where people com jogging and biking. Fishermen also come to collect mosquito larvae from the existing stream.

In conclusion, although the efficacy of the water treatment device is not completely achieved, the project has recovered the site revealing water as the source of the new productive activity but also as a matrix of the valley landscape. The delicate topography and the paths, varied in form and material, accompany the visitor in the discovery of water and its perceptual qualities. A succession of tree planted corridors, lawns, little dams offer views and access making the park a living place.

Conclusions 

- Reintroducing water as a character of the place may not refers to the original marshland, but rather reconnects the site to the territory by considering morphology as basic element of the valley landscape ecology.

The phytoremediation device depends strictly on the rigorous maintenance actions, otherwise the vegetation succession would modify the wetlands into another landscape. This fact points out the role of the management of the park after its realisation: the human action at the same time accompanies the continuous regeneration of the aquatic vegetation but also imposes as a stability factor of the landscape. At the same time biomass harvesting represents a source for compost and bioenergy production.

The landscape approach integrates the phytoremediation technique into a spatial design. In this way regeneration can be read at different scales: the water treatment system offers a healthy environment and the park changes the image of the site revealing landscape for inhabitants.

Acknowledgments 

I wish to thank prof. Denis Delbaere (LACTH) and prof. Rita Occhiuto (Lab VTP) for the productive discussions; M. Chevalier (Agglomération Lens-Lievin) for all attention and helpful documentation.

Bringing Health into Housing: A European Approach to the Design of Post-World War II Dwellings in Maryland

Selena Bagnara Milan1

1University IUAV of Venice, Venice, 30135, Italy; University of Nova Gorica, Nova Gorica, 5000, Slovenia
E-mail: sbagnaramilan@gmail.com

Abstract

During the post-World War II era (1947-1965), the state of Maryland experienced an extraordinary economic development, which aroused ‘the ubiquitous dream of individually owning one’s house and garden’ (Graham, 2016), welcoming the many new undertakings in the design and construction of affordable dwellings for starter families, veterans, and newcomers. With new waves of immigration, many Europeans established their professional practices in the United States, adapting to the needs of a new country ideas and concepts of the Modern Movement they had been exposed to since the 1920s.

This paper aims at illustrating one of those stories, that is the original contribution of the Hirsch Family — an architect, Poldi, influenced by Le Corbusier, and a medical doctor, Günther, specialized in public health —, who fled Germany to Palestine during the Nazi persecution, attended Swiss universities, and immigrated to the United States in 1953. The architectural outcome of their lifetime union and collaboration was an interdisciplinary approach to the design of dwellings in Harford County’s suburban landscape, characterized by the integration of public health research and architectural design practice in a coherent and synergistic — yet still exploratory — way. The architect’s effort towards ‘the control and improvement of the physical environment’ (Rosen, 2015) contemplated both an adequate house layout and appropriate green areas within a clear relationship, and meant to improve social well-being as well as assure habitability and constructability, demonstrating a forward-looking and ‘preventive’ outlook to architecture that went ‘beyond the condition of the housing unit itself’ (Krieger & Higgins, 2002).

Keywords: housing; Modern Movement; Poldi Hirsch; public health; suburban landscape

Introduction

Directly after World War II, an unprecedented diffusion of prosperity and social well-being brought the housing market back into full swing as suburban homes and subdivisions boomed, marking ‘a genuine turning point in the history of American modernism’ in Maryland (Gournay, 2005, p. 32), with planning becoming a diffuse and essential practice. Notwithstanding the new domestic ideal, the construction world was ‘short of skilled labour and materials’ (USAEC, 1998, p. 10), calling builders and designer to conceive economical, yet innovative, solutions for the housing industry through the use of new materials and standardized methods.

During the late 1940s, concerns about diffuse diseases, such as tuberculosis and respiratory infections, led to a new sensitivity towards the substantial relations between health issues and the housing physical environment (Krieger & Higgins, 2002), along with a keen interest towards the study of the significant components of healthy housing in terms of both physiological and psychological and needs.

Following these trends and in an attempt to provide low-cost housing for suburban dwellers, Poldi Hirsch — in collaboration with her husband Günther, a public health practitioner (Hirsch, 2012) — offered to the local housing deficiency innovative solutions, which combined cost-effective homebuilding, efficient layouts, quality of accessibility, and forward-looking site planning that integrated ‘greener and healthier living’ into Modern neighbourhood design.

Materials and Methods

Research for this study was primarily drawn from an in-depth architectural tour (“The Modern Projects,” 2015) of the buildings in oeuvre of Poldi Hirsch in Havre de Grace, Maryland. The visit — conducted in 2015 by the Women in Architecture Committee (WIA) of AIA Baltimore — was a corollary to the travelling exhibit ‘Early Women of Architecture in Maryland,’ celebrating 12 women architects and designers recognized as pioneers of the Modern Movement in Maryland (Storms & Dempsey, 2015).

The methodological design contemplates a qualitative analysis for case studies of Hirsch’s architectural endeavours. For the anamnesis of the selected case studies, the analysis uses mostly primary sources, such as original building plans and permits, as well as autobiographical notes and informal interviews. This research paper follows a double path: acquiring knowledge about the social, economic, legislative and architectural events of the time period (1947–1965) in the post-WWII housing development in north-eastern Maryland, and how these influenced the architect’s design; and investigating the distinctive traits and significance of the plans, construction methods, and planning strategies in the suburban landscape.

Results and Discussion

With the rapid suburbanization that followed World War II, the innovations in the construction industry (Hunter, 1999), and the new trends in housing types and amenities, Poldi Hirsch — operating as a custom builder and the first woman to become a corporate member of the AIA Baltimore Chapter — designed and built duplexes houses, garden style apartments, and single family houses in which Modern living concepts where applied in association with a qualified consideration of environmental attributes influencing health and well-being.

Her architectural contribution — which reflected the significant cultural shift in housing design in the post-World War II era (Heath, 1956, pp. 4-6) — featured interior functionality, pleasant suburban setting, diversification in exterior appearance, and the use of innovative construction methods. As the site of a home was recognized as a determinant of health (Krieger & Higgins, 2002; Rosen, 2015), green space and side yards were provided in order to ensure quality of accessibility. Following the complex social changes of the 1950s, which had important effects on the design of suburban houses (Ames, 1995), Poldi’s layouts were coherently simplified and characterized by a balanced asymmetry: they consisted of multifunctional living rooms overlooking the front yards with plenty of natural light, efficient built-in kitchens at the back of the house to allow the supervision of family outdoor activities, staircases conveniently located, and basements susceptible to be converted into family rooms or offices. In doing so, she noticeably embraced a kind of rational design that expressed the desire of achieving higher standards in terms of functionality and efficiency, as well as in housing quality associated with multiple dimensions of health.

Conclusions

The innovative outlook to housing design that Poldi Hirsch developed in her architectural production is certainly rooted in the well-established European narrative, which was influenced by the lesson of Le Corbusier (Gournay, 2005; Graham, 2016). The significance of her contribution consisted in refraining from the mere stylistic aspect of architecture, and in electing as dominant designing approach a more technological and practical method that reflected both the new residential expectations in American postwar life and the concomitant public health involvement in the housing arena. Within the above conceptual framework, the author recognizes Poldi Hirsch’s crucial role in addressing effectively the socio-economic housing issues of her time through an innovative and interdisciplinary approach to construction and planning.

Acknowledgments

I gratefully acknowledge the Hirsch Family for being so gracious in opening their home for the 2015 Docomomo Tour. During the site investigations, a number of individuals allowed access to their residences as well. I am appreciative of the time and assistance provided by the civil servants of the City of Aberdeen, Maryland; in particular, I would like to thank Mr. Phyllis G. Grover, Director of Planning and Community Development, and Ms. Monica A. Correll, City Clerk, for their assistance in locating original drawings and in providing digital copies of file projects; also, Ms. Anne Dulik, Treasurer at the Aberdeen Room Archives and Museum, who provided assistance with the archival collection as well as useful information on the availability of primary sources in the area. Staff of the City of Havre de Grace, Maryland, shared information important to understanding the availability of historic records; I especially would like to thank Ms. Colleen F. Critzer, Permits Clerk.

Fig. 1. Medical Arts Building, 131 S. Union Ave, Havre de Grace, 1960. Fig. 2. Townhouse Duplex, 715 Lewis St, Havre de Grace, 1962-63. Fig. 3. Hirsch’s Architectural Studies. Photos by Selena Bagnara Milan.

Guidelines for Urban and Territorial Regeneration:
Landscape Design as a Therapeutic Device

Maria Lodovica Delendi

Polytechnic Department of Engineering and Architecture,
University of Studies of Udine, Udine, 33100, Italy
maria.delendi@uniud.it

Keywords: Green Infrastructures, ES, NbS, Nature as Therapy, Changing Paradigm.

Abstract

Green Infrastructures, intended as environmental infrastructures, can play a determinant role in urban and regional planning, where the ‘region’ we mean is inspired by Mumford’s first outlined bio-region green matrix. Changing paradigm means that the environmental infrastructure becomes the connective tissue that offers ES and NbS from the micro to the macro scale, and determines planning decisions on the basis of sustainability indicators. Landscape design as a therapeutic device for urban and territorial regeneration means that we care, first of all, for human and environmental health, and we pay attention to social prevention in a system where nature is recognised as a complex element with multitasking purpose that can be analysed and projected in multipurpose layers. The environmental infrastructure connects cultural, anthropological, and hydro-geo-morphological elements, but can also structure new eco-settlements and incorporate abandoned areas, such as brownfield sites. Moreover, we must consider different levels of action: the biochemical on the physical level, and the perceptive on the psycho-emotional level. Both have an impact on health, and should guide the design of spaces and the decisions about planning. We have data regarding environmental causation for different pathologies, meaning that the precaution principle can lead us to a preventive planning, using our updated knowledge on pollution damage, social costs, and the therapeutic effects of both nature and also of planned spaces to create benefits from the micro to the macro scale, and produce savings in health and social costs. We would argue that by changing point of view, and focusing on human physical and psychological health as part of the ecosystem, we can structurally reverse the traditional approach to urban and territorial planning and improve new economies and ways of living. By crossing data, we can create parameters that can guide this approach.

Introduction.

The planetary and all-encompassing spread of pollutants, the silent pandemic of neurodegenerative diseases and tumours, and the exposure of children and the increase in childhood neoplasms makes it “naive to think that the few and totally insufficient regulations put in place in the last decades can really preserve the inhabitants of the world from the effects of such an all-pervading pollution” (Burgio, 2015). We can consider that a state of environmental emergency exists in regards to pollution levels and their pathological effects, which necessitates bold and timely measures to be taken to ensure the adoption of a health lens that guides planning and design choices to safeguard human health and the environment.

Materials and Methods

The research is based on the data collection of prestigious scientific institutions, on the research of scientific communities (HCI 2017; ISS 2017; WHO 2016a, 2016b; UN; SIPAFS 2010a, 2011b, 2016c), and on the study of available instruments that have been recognised as active pollution abatement and therapeutic devices at a physical- psychological level, in order to define an action strategy founded on the concept of using environmental infrastructure as the basis of every reflection on planning and design.

Results and Discussion

Atmospheric pollution is responsible for about 30 thousand deaths in Italy every year just as a result of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), equating to 7% of all deaths (excluding accidents). In terms of months of life lost, this means that pollution will shorten the life of each Italian by 10 months on average; 14 for those living in the North, 6.6 for the inhabitants of the Centre, and 5.7 for those living in the South and the islands. The effects are greater in the North, where merely respecting the legal limits would save 11,000 lives a year (www.viias.it).

Applying sophisticated forecasting models for the concentrations of pollutants throughout the national territory, the CCM VIIAS project has estimated the exposure of the entire Italian population, both for total mortality and for respiratory and cardio-circulatory diseases and lung cancer, down to regional detail.

It emerges that 29% of the Italian population live in places where the concentration of pollutants is constantly above the legal threshold, but also that considerable inequalities exist in terms of health effects for the Italian territory as a whole. As might be expected, the effect of pollution is worse in the North (65% of the total exposure), generally in relation to urban areas congested by traffic and industrialised areas. The combustion of biomass (principally wood and pellets) is also responsible for a higher incidence of death and disease, due to particulate exposure.

The estimates made by the project highlight the evolution of the health effects of pollution over time. If in 2005 the number of deaths attributable to pollution was, respectively, 34,552 for PM 2.5, 23,387 for NO2, and 1,707 for O3, in 2010 a sharp decrease was observed for PM 2.5 (21,524) and NO2 (11,993), especially owing to a reduction in emissions due to the economic recession, while in 2020, despite technological improvements and the adoption of new policies, the scenario will not have improved compared to ten years previously (28,595 deaths for PM2.5, and 10,117 for NO2).

The CCM VIIAS project includes two alternative scenarios for 2020:

•Complete adhesion throughout Italy to the legal limits set by European and national legislation

•Uniform reduction of 20% in the concentrations of pollutants in the territory

In both cases, a saving of lives would be achieved, compared to 2005, of 11,000 for PM2.5 and 14,000 for NO2 in the first scenario, and of 16,000 for PM 2.5 and 18,000 for NO2 in the second.

Therefore, effective compliance with the limits established by current legislation, and especially a further decrease of 20% in the annual average concentration of pollutants, would have positive effects on public health and, consequently, for the economy too: according to statistics from the WHO, in fact, 10,000 deaths avoided every year correspond to about 30 billion euros.

Protective and therapeutic Urban Green: The in-depth study carried out has made it possible to quantify the role of urban forests in the provision of regulating ecosystem services, highlighting the positive effect of the biodiversity of tree species in the removal of O3 and PM10. In addition, for the year 2005, an indicator for O3 and PM10 removal by the main types of vegetation present in the metropolitan area (t/ha) was produced.

The economic value of the ecosystem service performed by urban green areas has also been quantified, and is estimated to be around 2-3 million euros/year for O3, and up to 36 million euros/year for PM10 (in terms of gross values, from which the costs of managing the green itself must be subtracted). This function of removing atmospheric pollution is considered in the context of strategies for the conservation of biodiversity, and explains the role that Green Infrastructure assumes in policies aimed at improving air quality in metropolitan areas through increasing the provision of ecosystem services for human well-being and quality of life (Etingoff, 2016; Andreucci, 2017).

The pollutants that are subject to assessment are primarily linked to emissions of vehicular traffic (NOx, PM2.5) and to domestic heating (PM2.5). NOx emissions are, moreover, among the principal precursors of the secondary component of PM in the atmosphere and, together with Non-Methane Volatile Organic Compounds (NMVOCs), are precursors of the ozone that is a pollutant of only secondary importance.

Greater commitment to the problem of pollution is having some effect. The European Environmental Agency (EEEA) noted a general improvement in the trend of pollution in the period 2002-2011, recording reductions in primary PM emissions (-14% for PM10, and -16% for PM2.5 and its main precursors, and -27% for nitrogen oxides).

In the transport sector, due to the progressive reduction of emissions of Euro 4 rated vehicles and to the passage to Euro 5 rating in 2009, a general reduction in emissions was observed, namely of -24% for PM10, -27% for PM2.5, and -31% for NOx. The progressive reduction of vehicle emissions has meant that the percentage of particulate emissions from vehicular traffic due to wear, brakes and tires, and road surface abrasion is becoming more and more important, and significantly increases if, along with the abrasion itself, the resuspension of dust previously deposited on the roads is also considered. However, the contribution of polluting substances due to emissions from diesel engines that are very common in Italy remains significant.

In industrialised countries, the sources of fine dust are: 1) combustion of petrol and diesel for land, air, and sea transport; 2) combustion of coal, wood, oil, and biomass for the heating of buildings and the production of electricity for domestic and industrial use; 3) erosion of road surfaces caused by car traffic and the abrasion of car brakes and tires; 4) industrial activities such as emissions from steel plants, incinerators, refineries, construction projects, mines, and cement factories; and 5) intensive agriculture. Emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the most dangerous, since they contain heavy metals, inorganic salts, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, among which are agents known to be carcinogenic and toxic to the cells (source: Viias).

It has been estimated that 30% of the fine dust present in the Po Valley and other agricultural areas of Italy is the product of intensive farming and of the nitrogen fertilizers used in agriculture. The deposition of ammonia in the soil causes the acidification of the soils and the eutrophication of water bodies. In fact, the data regarding the impact of intensive farming are catastrophic. The 65 billion head of cattle estimated in Europe in 2013 require impressive quantities of forage and grains that cause huge amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus based fertilizers, and herbicides, pesticides, insecticides, acaricides, and other plant protection products to be spread in the countryside, some of which are classified as very toxic and harmful to health1. Meanwhile, 41.2% of surface water is contaminated by pesticides, and 1⁄3rd of the monitored points reveal pollution of the deep aquifers. In addition, the ill-considered use of antibiotics has brought the now well-known problem of resistance. The tonnage of nitrogen and phosphorus used to feed the animals for slaughter go on to accumulate in the environment and are concentrated in aquifer systems, creating problems of toxic algae.

The problem of pollution in intensive farming is well-known, as is the correlation between pathologies and food quality, and, therefore, between heart disease, cancer, diabetes. The notion that the quality of food can be improved by growing it in a natural way in fertile soil, abandoning chemical fertilizers and promoting an organic agriculture, was studied experimentally during the 1900s, and emerged powerfully in the 70s (Thompkins & Bird, 2002).

Another chapter is that of pollution from air and sea transport, which are major causes of pollution owing to a diverse range of factors (EPA, 2017).

Solutions (Berrino & Fontana, 2017): There is a need to raise the awareness of political administrators and entrepreneurs of the issue and encourage greater investment in scientific research in order to: 1) Develop new materials and technologies for improving the energy efficiency of buildings and means of transport; 2) Boost the extraction of energy from renewable sources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, and wave power; 3) Conduct research into chemical products with low environmental impact; 4) Maximise the energy efficiency and resilience of the green energy distribution networks produced by small photovoltaic plants and large wind farms through informatics networks; 5) Implement networks of non-motorised transport, and expand green networks and parks, rewarding virtuous behaviour, heavily tax products that harm the health of citizens and the environment, and abolish subsidies for intensive agriculture and petrol and coal extraction, instead incentivise investments in renewable energy, green research, and organic and biodynamic agriculture.

In addition, there are numerous researches that support the performance of physical activity of an aerobic or cardio type, including: brisk walking, jogging, running, cycling, cross country skiing, skating, aerobic dancing, and swimming. For example, light jogging at 8 km/h for less than 60-140 minutes per week reduces mortality. It takes only 15 minutes a day of low intensity physical activity to reduce the risk of mortality by 14% and increase life expectancy by 3 years. Running every day for 5-10 minutes at 11 km/h reduces both cardiovascular and total mortality by between 39 and 45%. It should be borne in mind, however, that the health benefits of cycling, and of aerobic activity in general, exist only up to a point. In environments in which there is a concentration of external pollutants in the air below 90 micrograms of PM2.5 per cubic metre, the benefits outweigh the risks. Beyond this limit the benefit decreases until, above the threshold of 160 micrograms per cubic metre, the risks actually outweigh the benefits. Therefore, the choices of planning, landscape design, and management that facilitate access to parks, gardens, water courses, forests, and other green spaces and recreational areas, and that favour safe cyclability promote healthy lifestyles only by keeping air quality under control. The importance of planning the environmental infrastructure as previously explained is evident here.

According to therapeutic indications, urban forests are therefore desirable: increasing the level of urban forestry, in addition to implementing biodiversity (Delendi, 2012), not only helps in the ionization of the air, in the production of oxygen, and in the absorption of fine dust, but also has a therapeutic effect on the mind and spirit (Vining & Merrick, 2012). The minimum surface area should be 3,000 square metres and be at least 20 metres wide, with trees at least 5 metres tall, and with a careful selection of species that produce the most terpenes: e.g. holm oak, cork, chestnut, and beech. Good exposure to light is necessary, with a usability of 300 metres from residences (5-6 minutes on foot). We recommend immersions of two hours twice a day, or alternatively immersions of 3/4 hours (Mencagli & Nieri, 2017).

It is, therefore, necessary for the forest to have an adequate walking trail of at least two or three hours length, with ring routes to offer the possibility of jogging. The design of urban forests can be refined to the point of creating bio-energetic devices by recognising the therapeutic properties of the individual essences (Nieri, 2009). According to the statistics on the health of neighbourhoods near green areas, an area of this type should ideally be found at a distance of 1 to 3 km from the neighbourhood. For weaker groups the distance is reduced to 1 km. Beyond the health benefits of a system of connected green areas, above all for mental health, well-planned cities reduce travel time in private vehicles, in turn favouring social activities and interaction. Neighbourhood development strategies that promote health (Health-supporting neighbourhood) encourage local shops, services, and entertainment to be reachable within a walking and cycling distance. The experience of eco-neighbourhoods like Malmo or Eco-viiki (Gordon & Eskola, 2014) with spaces for the biological self-production of food fits perfectly into the environmental infrastructure network, as well as the actions taken at national and international level for urban resilience and the fight against climate change (Lazzeroni, 2016; Mezzi & Pellizzaro, 2016).

Conclusions

Following the Health Lens approach, it seems evident that, alongside adequate environmental policies, to achieve a comprehensive action within the context of an environmental infrastructure, which for us is the whole territory, green and wooded areas represent the continuity necessary to connect pre-existing settlements and new infrastructure.

Conceived on the model of eco-neighbourhoods for promoting virtuous models of life, they are one of the devices that is emerging to combat climatic change at a national and international level, as well as a serious rethinking of the current networks of productivity and mobility.

The Tagus Estuary:
from barrier of the river’s edge city towards its strongest binder

Caterina Anastasia

Research Centre for Architecture, Urban Planning and Design (CIAUD), Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa, Rua Sá Nogueira, 1349-063 Lisbon, Portugal;
e-mail: cat_anastasia@hotmail.com / caterinaanastasia@fa.ulisboa.pt

Abstract

This presentation analyses how the most evident limit – the water space of the Tagus Estuary – of a large and densely urbanised area – the Lisbon Metropolitan Area – can function as its strongest binder, its ‘natural’ link and its shared public space.

The estuary corresponds physically to the core of the metropolitan area, constituting about 3.3% of the national territory, with a population of roughly 3 million inhabitants (about one quarter of the population of Portugal). At the economic level, approximately 25% of the labour force, 30% of national companies and 33% of employment are concentrated here, contributing to more than 36% of national GDP (www.aml.pt, 2017).

Beyond the administrative boundaries often materialized by the river, this research focuses on the waterlines and riverbanks on both sides of the Tagus Estuary, seeking to understand how this waterway has become the ‘new’ centre of the ‘city of two banks’ – the City of the Tagus Estuary – and how it can be the space of opportunity for built and natural metropolitan projects.

Understanding and drawing the Tagus Estuary humid system, this research aims to relate it with realized interventions, from urban projects to transportation systems, mobility and environmental planning to cultural, touristic and spontaneous actions. The goal is to shed light on the dynamics that could make the estuary the centre of the metropolitan city, linking them to estuarine ecological problems and the weak relationships between the watercourses and their banks / the Tagus and its mainland.

This work suggests that the fragile estuarine hydrographic network and the water-land transition areas can be the way – and the place – through which we can build the City of the Tagus Estuary as a sustainable, green, healthy, safe and resilient metropolitan area.

Keywords: city and river, water landscape, Tagus Estuary hydrographic network, City of the Tagus Estuary.

Introduction

The Tagus River divides Portugal in two zones – north and south – with significantly different physiographic, biophysical and cultural characteristics. The river is a thick physical barrier built up from the sedimentary basin of the Tagus, the estuary and its shipping canal, and leading to the Atlantic Ocean.

The river marks the geographical contrast between the country’s north and south, specifically characterizing the Lisbon metropolitan territory where the estuary gives life to wide, flat and humid areas, contrasting the landscape of the hinterland. The Tagus is a clearly legible corridor topped by an inner transition sea (Mar da Palha) around which the main metropolitan conurbations settled and communicated with one another.

We find the differences between north and south reflected in the estuarine riverbanks inserted into the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA). The northern margin of the estuary is higher and mountainous, there are beaches, built up and perfectly defined riverbanks. In the south, the shore is alternated by artificial interventions – especially platforms in correspondence with shipping canals – and natural evolution. Hence, the shore is much more indented and there are vast unstable areas (emerged or submerged) influenced by the tides (Ribeiro, 2011).

Doubtless to say, from a geographical and environmental point of view, the Tagus Estuary is the matrix and the centre of the LMA, the physical element structuring, at ecosystemic and socio-economic levels, both riverbanks.

In its inner parts, the estuary is characterized by natural areas (marshes, water culture and agriculture) and by more industrialized, naval and urbanised areas close to its mouth. Spread out alongside the estuary, the provinces of Lisbon and Setúbal, with 18 municipalities – 10 of which along the Tagus – form the LMA, located within a geographical area of 3128 sq. km. This area hosts a complex system encompassing and combining urban, industrial, military, leisure and recreation activities with fluvial traffic, agriculture, fishing and salt extraction. These activities occur in the context of an essential ecological dimension, with 25% of the estuary classified by the Natural Reserve of the Tagus Estuary (RNET) as a protected area.

Despite the strong differences of the margins, this article intends to identify the Tagus Estuary as a structural and cohesive element for the ecological and socio-territorial connectivity of the City of the Tagus Estuary (CTE) – the urbanised area established along the estuarine watercourse system.

Figure 1: Tagus River hydrographic network and LMA administrative boundaries

Visualizing the City of the Tagus Estuary (CTE)

Understanding and drawing the Tagus Estuary humid system, this research aims to shed light on what is today the CTE and what are the dynamics in progress that make the estuary its core. A territory made of land and water, made of intersections between land and water. How is it urbanised and connected? How is it crossed and used? What is the estuarine humid system (its hydrographic network and related humid areas) and how does it interface with the built city? How does the city look at and ‘remember’ the estuary? In other words, what are the intangible and tangible estuarine cultural heritages?

The main tool implemented to answer these questions has been drawing – making ‘collages’ of different documents and data. Drawing as a tool for researching and developing potential relations between problem-statements and spatial interventions. As a means to getting a grasp on the intrinsic qualities of space, drawing helps to connect generic planning concepts and strategies with context-bound spatial interventions. Furthermore, in the context of water landscapes, in particular deltaic or estuarine environments – so dynamic, elusive and scale transcending – the act of drawing is especially challenging.¹

The estuary: primary ecology and core of the CTE

In the post-industrial era, the ecologically-based estuarine hydrographic network and the land-water interface have a growing social, cultural and economic relevance, resulting as spaces of opportunity for urban and natural environmental projects. They can be considered as a cohesive and sustainable resource to be implemented into the territorial management in order to reach and consolidate an estuarine cultural identity. This goes a step beyond the ‘light’ / ‘weak’ manifesto of a “metropolitan area centred on the estuary” provided by the urban plans in force (see: Anastasia, 2017).

The estuarine hydrographic network constitutes the primary ecology of the CTE, its ‘natural’ link, its shared public space and strongest binder.

The ecological perspective reveals the intimate relationship between waters and the inhabited lands along them. On the one hand, urbanisation (city, industry, agriculture and abandoned extractive areas) compromises the fragile balance and the natural characteristic of the Tagus altering the runoff water flow, increasing the pollutant discharges, diverting and regulating the river flow through the construction of dams and reservoirs. On the other hand, the marshland vegetation plays an important role in the purification of waters and in the reduction of eutrophication. In addition, where the margins are more unstable (like along the southern bank of the Tagus), the estuarine water serves as a buffer to the progress of desertification and mitigates the effects of climate change driven mainly by cities (APA, 2013; ICNF, 2007; Oliveira, 2016).

Some conclusions of an ongoing research

This work suggests that the fragile estuarine hydrographic network and the water-land transition areas can be the means – and the place – through which we can build the City of the Tagus Estuary as a sustainable, green, healthy, safe and resilient metropolitan area. A City prepared to live with the effects of climate change, to define adaptation strategies for the increase in mean sea level, mainly interacting with tides, storm surges and undulation (Costa & Figueira de Sousa, 2016; Crisóstomo, 2015). An inhabited territory that looks towards future scenarios of rising flood and sea levels and contemplates them as part of its own natural instability – the main characteristic of the land-water interface.

“An estuary demands gradients not walls”, “the accommodation of the sea not a war against it, (...) to accommodate uncertainty through resilience” (Mathur & da Cunha, 2009).

Acknowledgments 

The work here presented was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Grant SFRH/BPD/116331/2016); Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at CIAUD - FA/ULisboa.

1 Delta Urbanism Interdisciplinary Research Program – TUDelft Faculty of Architecture & the Built Environment; Netherlands. (https://deltaurbanismtudelft.org/2017/04/20/drawing-the-delta/)

Session IV - References

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SESSION V
Green systems and wellbeing

Are natural environments really good for your health and wellbeing? What does the evidence say, and why do we need it?

Benedict W. Wheeler

European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter Medical School
e-mail: B.W.Wheeler@exeter.ac.uk

Abstract

Evidence on how natural environments (‘green/blue space’) impact on population health and wellbeing has recently been rapidly accumulating from a range of disciplines. Links have been made with a wide range of health outcomes, through pathways including promotion of physical activity, stress recovery, and social contact. Policy and practice reflecting these links have been developing in tandem, from World Health Organisation briefings on urban green space, to national government environmental/public health policy, to local authority open space strategies.

In this talk I will consider the international evidence base, and related intersectoral activities, such as the WHO Europe programme on urban greenspace, and the global Natural Capital Project. I will highlight the complexity of these relationships and the need for us to take a broad, interdisciplinary approach involving a range of social, natural and health sciences. The connections with socio-spatial health inequalities will also be discussed; high quality natural environments might be ‘equigenic’, providing some degree of resilience against the health-damaging effects of socio-economic deprivation. However, environmental interventions have the potential to widen health inequalities, and this needs thorough understanding. There should be opportunities to capitalise on the ‘heath values’ of nature to the benefit of both people and the environment, but I will argue that rigorous research is needed to maximise the opportunity and guard against unintended consequences.

Lyon’s “green strategy”, from urban planning to sustainable green spaces conception.

Magali Rogel

Direction Espaces Verts, Responsable du Pôle Aménagement des Paysages Urbains, Ville de Lyon
e-mail: magali.rogel@mairie-lyon.fr

Abstract

Lyon is recognized in international rankings for its attractiveness and quality of life, which are the result of the metamorphosis that our city has experienced over the last ten years.

Lyon enjoys a balanced development that combines economic dynamism, cultural vitality, social cohesion and environmental protection.

While making our city an innovative, competitive and attractive territory, we are committed to preserving the “common good” in our territory: historical and built heritage, landscape, quality of life.

We are also conducting an urban development which, beyond the requirement for the quality of the projects developed, takes care of the “gaps between”. We thus favor everything that can give more value to this “common good” accessible to all Lyonnais, by making urban life softer: efficient public transport throughout the territory, public spaces pleasant and friendly, in line with the quality of our heritage and the expectations of the Lyonnais, islets of freshness and nature, favoring soft and active modes and the continuity of the green-blue nexus.

The banks of the Rhone, the banks of the Saone, the rue Garibaldi, the Blandan Park, have become symbols of the reconquest of urban spaces now acclaimed by the Lyonnais and tourists.

In Lyon, nature is now more present and its development continues. On the public domain, the approach of our Department of green spaces, pioneer of the “zero phytosanitary” strategy and certificated by the french most demanding environmental certification since 2005, has made our gardens and urban parks true biodiversity reserves. The environmental quality of our natural spaces, and the service provided to the inhabitants of Lyon on the fight against global warming, pollution and generally on the improvement of health, are made possible thanks to an integrated approach of ecological quality and of uses, carried out from the emergence of the projects, through their conception and their construction sites, until their daily maintenance.

The “old” parks managed according to these principles, like those achieved over the last twenty years, bear witness to this coherence of action and the positive effects of this approach on the quality of life and the beauty of the daily landscapes of our city.

The Tête d’Or Park is the first of them. But there are many others, in each district, who each participate in their place and their scale in this “global garden”, as the emerged parts of a “green iceberg”.

The living territory and the biodiversity, essential elements for the balance of our “urban biotope”, do not stop at the limits of our public spaces - or on the surface of the ground.

Our strategy extends globally to the preservation of fertile soils, the infiltration of rainwater, the preservation of natural resources (soils, water, air). It also encourages, through the regulation of the local urban plan and in the accompaniment of private urban projects, a particular attention on all the “not built” spaces, invited to participate with the same ecological qualities in this frame of the alive, green and blue.

Witness the large urban projects of the past 20 years: the Confluence, true laboratory of the city of tomorrow, distinguished both in production and consumption of energy, and in the field of intelligent transportation and preservation of biodiversity. La Duchère - labeled eco-district by the Ministry of sustainable development - and the park of Vallon, Mermoz and its vast tree-lined and flowered promenade where disappeared an urban highway, the Part Dieu which also testifies of this global approach with the reflection carried out on the “easy soil” that greatly improves the amenity and qualities of public spaces despite a particularly complex context.

The parks and gardens realized these last years present remarkable ecological qualities, which are immediately perceptible - and welcomed very positively - by the Lyonnais thanks to the consequences of this requirement : they are islands of freshness, of peace where the biodiversity (plants, insects) is remarkable and “accessible to all”, where one can find multiple uses and engage in activities that appeal to all.

The association of our fellow citizens with each of these projects is an indispensable factor in their success and enables the inhabitants of Lyon to appropriate their daily landscape, in which they can flourish, to which they will feel they belong and that they will want to produce collectively.

This encourages us to create the desire for an urban future that is worthwhile, where we will want to continue living tomorrow. The specific experiments already conducted - such as citizen gardening, “Micro Floral Implantations”, or shared gardens - illustrate the willingness of many to contribute to this common good. It is our responsibility to ensure that everyone’s “good ideas” contribute to the collective improvement of our living territory.

Community gardens as healing tools for patients with eating disorders

David Grohmann1, Cristian Corvaglia2, Maria Elena Menconi1

1Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, University of Perugia, borgo XX giugno, 74 - 06121, Italy;
2Il Pellicano Onlus, Via Guglielmo Marconi, 6, 06121 Perugia PG
e-mail: david.grohmann@unipg.it

Abstract

In the latest thirty years, horticulture has been proved to be particularly effective as a healing tool for various medical conditions.

Within the framework of knowledge offered by various international experiences, in 2017 started a collaboration between the Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences (DSA3) of the University of Perugia and the non-profit “Il Pellicano” that works with patients with eating disorders such as obesity, anorexia and BED (Binge Eating Disorder), etc.

The project entails the involvement of several patients with different disorders in taking care of the collective gardening project that has been developed within the Department’s premises (Grohmann & Menconi, 2016) since 2015 and a follow up work with the nutritionists of “Il Pellicano” introducing the harvested vegetables in the patients’ diet.

Keywords: urban agriculture; urban farming; collective gardening; obesity; anorexia;

Introduction

Urban open spaces are becoming more and more profitable and therefore it is more difficult to protect areas to be destined to urban agriculture projects (Lawson, 2004; Hou, Johnson and Lawson, 2009). Community gardens have often been considered a temporary land use only to be replaced by higher-value development (Francis, Cashdan, and Paxson, 1984; Lawson, 2004).

In this context, it is very important to be able to show through case studies the vast spectrum of benefits that a community garden is able to provide (Francis, 2009), even from a healing point of view (Winterbottom & Wagenfeld, 2015).

Roger Ulrich (Ulrich, 1984) has clearly recognized the strong relationship between what can be considered nature, even if highly domesticated as in urban green areas, and wellbeing and Eckerling helped us defining what a healing garden is: “a garden in a healing setting designed to make people feel better” (Eckerling, 1996).

Material and Methods

The collaboration between DSA3 and the “Il Pellicano” non-profit started in the spring of 2017.

The study group consisted of five patients including three overweight and two normal weight subjects.

Regarding the eating disorders: three of the patients are affected by Binge Eating Disorder (BED) and two by Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID).

The followed protocol is organized in two differ stages: one that takes place in the community garden (fig.1), the other in the association’s headquarters. Another important part of the process is the transfer of patients on foot from the headquarters of the association to the garden and vice-versa (1,2 km each way) and the establishment of a routine setting.

Fig. 1 The St. Peter’s collective gardening project – Perugia - Italy

The patients came to the garden once every week over a period of five months, for a variable time ranging from one to three hours were they collaborated also with a class of students of an institution formerly called “University of the Third Age”, with 10 students aged between 60 and 68.

The activities carried out in the garden have ranged from sowing, transplanting, managing, to the collection of various vegetables within the greenhouse, raised beds and open field (fig.2).

Fig. 2 Project siteplan

The second part of the activities was carried out at the “il Pellicano” headquarter and consisted in small groups’ talks about nutritional qualities of the collected vegetables (e.g. fig. 3), manipulation and preparation of food, using the same vegetables.

Fig. 3 A patient with his weekly harvest

Fig. 4 “Ortobello”, a small raised beds community garden used in the project

Results and discussion

However still incomplete, mainly for the lack on the standardization of data collected through the use of a questionnaire that it is still being finalized, the first results are considered positive by the nutritionists of “Il Pellicano” in terms of both quality and quantity of consumed food by the patients. These data are still more qualitative than quantitative, because it was decided to proceed through small subsequent steps, in order not to force the patients to adjust to a different disruptive setting.

Since some of the patients showed some concerns when too many people were involved in the activities, another smaller area has been individuated in order to establish a further step between the indoor setting and the community garden. It is a smaller community garden composed by four raised beds and some benches, that was built in the spring of 2015 with a joint effort between the neighbourhood, the DSA3, and The Umbra Institute an American academic institution based in Perugia called “Ortobello” (fig.4).

During this summer season, the participant patients will be asked to fill a questionnaire before and after the experience to start collecting comparable data for a long time observation project. These questionnaires will be soon finalized.

Conclusions

Community are proving to be a valuable polyhedral asset in numerous urban contexts and their longevity seems to be related largely with their governance models and their capacity to attract a multiplicity of actors (Fox-Kämper et al., 2018).

The observation of one of the longest-running American “modern” community garden, Picardo Farm established in the city of Seattle in 1973, seems to suggest that the heterogeneity of the services offered within the garden can provide the opportunities to gather many different skills that can further enhance the positive effect of the garden presence per se.

Their functioning as a healing asset included in a solidly structured process can be furtherly explored and it can provide many interesting insights and outcomes, for both the medical and academic communities.

Acknowledgments

This project could not have been carried out without the invaluable work of Massimo Pilli and Francesco Prosperi, both members of the technical staff of the DSA3 and founding members of the San Pietro Green Team, the volunteer green areas’ maintenance group born within the DSA3 in 2015.

Comparing ecological networks in peri-urban landscapes: an application to Italy

Andrea De Montis1, Amedeo Ganciu1, Matteo Cabras1, Antonietta Bardi1, Valentina Peddio1, Maurizio Mulas1

1Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Sassari,
Sassari, 07100, Italy;
e-mail: andreadm@uniss.it

Abstract

Ecological networks consist of ensembles of habitat areas connected through material or immaterial corridors and are one the major counteractions to landscape fragmentation, i.e. the process of subdivision of large portion of green zones into smaller and more isolated areas. In this paper we study two ecological networks for the towns of Nuoro and Sassari (Italy) by applying complex network analysis tools able to describe their structure through simple and intuitive measures. Results are interesting, as they comparatively provide us with useful indication about the basic characteristics and the most central patches of the systems.

Keywords

Landscape fragmentation; metrics; barrier effect; green areas

Introduction

Ecological networks (ENs), i.e. compounds of a set of patches interconnected through a set of corridors, are major strategies for counteracting landscape fragmentation in stressed urban, peri-urban and rural domains (Modica et al., 2012). They are adopted in a lot of cases worldwide and their success or difficult rooting can be used as a living indicator of the inclination of human settlements to favour the development of resilient and healthy green systems (Jones-Walters, 2007). We start from the assessment of the patches (the nodes of the EN) interested by the colonization of two major vegetal target species (olm oak and olive oil tree), which are key for Mediterranean landscapes. The relations between the patches (the edges of the EN) are provided by the dispersal of the seed realized by the major animal vector species.

Materials and methods

We follow recent methodological advances in the field of ENs assessment (Hagen et al., 2012). Particularly, we adopt the approach proposed and developed by De Montis et al (2016). This approach allows us to locate the hot spots of the ENs, i.e. the places that need to be protected from external negative drivers.

In regional contest of Sardinia, Sassari and Nuoro represent, respectively, a medium (546.1 km2 surface area and about 129,000 inhabitants) and small-size (192 km2 surface area and about 37,000 inhabitants) urban settlement. Strong relationships between population, culture, history, economy, and landscape result as characteristics of the two study areas. In particular, Nuoro presents traits of urban ecology quite different as compared to the environment of Sassari.

Results and discussion

In this extended Abstract, we report on the comparative analysis of the topological and weighted centrality. In Table 1, we report on the average values of three major indices of topological centrality: the degree k (i.e. the number of connections of each node), the clustering coefficient C (i.e. the percentage of connected triplets with respect to all possible triplets including first neighbours of each node), and the BC (i.e. the percentage of shortest path connecting two nodes whatsoever and passing through a given node with respect to all possible shortest paths).

Table 1. Complex network analysis of the ecological networks of Nuoro and Sassari. Topological centrality measures

Town | <k> | <C> | <BC>
Nuoro | 102.65 | 0.61 | 0.00065
Sassari | 154.57 | 0.64 | 0.00043

The average degree <k> is in Sassari roughly 1.5 times larger than the one of Nuoro. As for the local connectivity of the nodes measured by the average clustering coefficient <C>, the interconnectedness is slightly larger for the case of Sassari. A different picture emerges, when we observe the average betweenness centrality <BC> -a powerful measure of the global centrality of the nodes. This figure is much larger for the case of Nuoro.

A

B

Figure 1. Network representation of the ecological networks of Sassari (A) and Nuoro (B): analysis of the Betweenness centrality.

In Figure 1, we include the spatial analysis of BC, which is key to the detection of the most central and critical patches of the ecological networks. In both the towns, the patches with the largest values of BC occupy central places. Figures 1 also reports on the spatial pattern of the weights, whose value depends on the probability of seed dispersal throughout the patches. In Table 2, the analyses of the average weight and strength, i.e. the sum of the weights attached to the edges converging in each node, are reported.

Table 2. Weighted network analysis of the ecological networks of Nuoro and Sassari.

Town | <w> | <s>
Nuoro | 0.00060 | 0.062
Sassari | 0.00003 | 0.005

The average value of the weight <w> is 20 times larger for Nuoro: a clear signature of a correspondingly higher capacity of that ecological network to diffuse seeds and thus to colonize patches. This is confirmed by the analysis of the average strength <s>, which shows in Nuoro a value more than 10 times higher than the corresponding figure of Sassari. This is due to the presence in Nuoro of large patches with a good seed dispersal capacity, i.e. nodes with links featured with a high weight. The other way around, the EN of Sassari includes small patches in a higher frequency.

Conclusions 

The results obtained are relevant and demonstrate that our approach can be added to other similar works reported in the literature (Eklöf et al., 2013; Nor et al, 2017). In addition, we have extended the work by De Montis et al. (2016) and confirmed its effectiveness for studying centrality issues in different cases. On the other side, some issues remain open and deserve further investigation. A major usefulness of the approach proposed by De Montis et al. (2016) consists of the resilience analysis. This analysis can be applied in a comparative perspective to ascertain the capacity to react to external shocks consisting in fatal attacks addressed randomly or deterministically. The results indicate the most critical patches of the ENs and the interaction of the whole systems with land use regimes ruled by municipal planning tools. We will be working on this issue in the next future.

Acknowledgments 

This essay reports on research activities funded by Fondazione di Sardegna in the project “Ecological networks and landscape planning: case studies in Sardinia”, principal investigator Andrea De Montis.

Session V - References

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Francis, M., Cashdan, L., Paxson, L., 1984. Community Open Spaces: Greening Neighborhoods Through Community Action and Land Conservation, Island Press, Washington, DC.

Francis, M., (2009). A Research Agenda for the Impact of Community Greening, Revisited. Community Greening Reviews 13, 61-63.

Fox-Kämper, R., Wesener, A., Münderlein, D., Sondermann, M., McWilliam, W., Kirke, N., (2018). Urban community gardens: An evaluation of governance approaches and related enablers and barriers at different development stages. Landscape and Urban Planning, 170, 59-68.

Grohmann, D.; Menconi, M.E. (2016). The vegetable gardens of St. Peter (Perugia –Italy): the rebirth of a forgotten place. Conference proceeding. IFLA 2016 Turin.

Hou, J., Johnson J.M., Lawson L.J. (2009). Greening cities, growing communities: learning from Seattle’s urban community gardens, University of Washington Press. Seattle, WA.

Lawson, L., 2004. The Planner in the Garden: A Historical View into the Relationship between Planning and Community Gardens. Journal of Planning History 3(2), 151-176.

Ulrich, R. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science, New Series, 4647, 420-421.

Winterbottom, D.; Wagenfeld, A. (2015). Therapeutic Gardens: Design for Healing Spaces. Timber Press. Portland, OR.

De Montis, A., Caschili, S., Mulas, M., Modica, G., Ganciu, A., Bardi, A., Ledda, A., Dessena, L., Laudari, L. & Fichera, C. R. (2016). Urban-rural ecological networks for landscape planning. Land Use Policy, 50, 312–327.

Eklöf, A., Jacob, U., Kopp, J., Bosch, J., Castro-Urgal, R., Chacoff, N. P., Dalsgaard, B., de Sassi, C., Galetti, M., Guimarães, P.R., Lomáscolo, S. B., Martín González, A. M., Pizo, M. A., Rader, R., Rodrigo, A., Tylianakis, J.M., Vázquez, D.P. & Allesina, S. (2013). The dimensionality of ecological networks. Ecol. Lett., 16(5), 577–583.

Hagen, M., Kissling, W.D., Rasmussen, C., De Aguiar, M.A.M., Brown, L.E., Carstensen, D. W., Alves-Dos-Santos, I., Dupont, Y.L., Edwards, F.K., Genini, J., Guimarães, P.R., Jenkins, G.B., Jordano, P., Kaiser-Bunbury, C.N., Ledger, M.E., Maia, K.P., Darcie Marquitti, F.M., Mclaughlin, Ó., Morellato, L.P.C., O’Gorman, E.J., Trøjelsgaard, K., Tylianakis, J.M., Morais Vidal, M., Woodward, G. & Olesen, J.M. (2012). Biodiversity, Species Interactions and Ecological Networks in a Fragmented World. Adv. Ecol. Res. 46, 89-210.

Jones-Walters, L. (2007). Pan-European ecological networks. Journal for Nature Conservation, 15(4), 262-264.

Joppa, L.N., Montoya, J.M., Solé, R., Sanderson, J. & Pimm, S.L. (2010). On nestedness in ecological networks. Evol. Ecol. Res., 12(1), 35–46.

Modica, G., Vizzari, M., Pollino, M., Fichera, C.R., Zoccali, P. & Di Fazio, S. (2012). Spatio-temporal analysis of the urban–rural gradient structure: an application in a Mediterranean mountainous landscape (Serra San Bruno, Italy). Earth Syst. Dyn. 3, 263–279.

Nor, A.N.M., Corstanje, R., Harris, J.A., Grafius, D.R. & Siriwardena, G.M. (2017). Ecological connectivity networks in rapidly expanding cities. Heliyon, 3(6).

SESSION VI
Urban planning and health

Private Green Space in urban housing: How important is it for a sustainable living?

Lei Gao1, Katinka H. Evensen1,2, Kostas Mouratidis1, Mina De Marino1, Grete Patil1

1Norwegian University of Life Sciences, 1432 Ås, Norway
2Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, 2619 Lillehammer, Norway
e-mail: grete.patil@nmbu.no

Abstract

This presentation introduces a project idea of the importance of urban private green space, which has received less attention than public green space studies. The project attempts to answer to this through an interdisciplinary research approach conducted by researchers from landscape architecture, urban planning, environmental psychology and public health.

Keywords: urban densification, health and well-being, perceived value, urban planning.

Introduction

The topic of our project is to examine the importance of Private Green Space (PGS) for sustainable urban housing. PGS can be seen as green outdoor space designed for private use. Examples may be private gardens, courtyards, backyards, balconies, terraces, and green rooftops among others. It may or may not have a legal private ownership, but it has a private use. Here, we specifically focus on the PGS attached to residential buildings, and exclude the PGS that belong to institutions.

There are several reasons for conducting such research. Firstly, within the global urbanisation and densification processes, the percentage of urban residents owning PGS, especially private gardens, has shown a trend of decline. For example, in the UK, it is estimated that 2.6 million homes will be without a private garden by 2020, compared to 2.16 million in 2010, and 1.6 million in 1995 (Hope, 2009). In Norway, currently 85% of residents in Norway today have private gardens or plots attached to their house (Statistics Norway, 2015), but this number is likely to decrease especially in big cities and towns undergoing densification. A second reason is that planners and policy makers have not yet acknowledged the relevance and the need for private green (e.g. when developing strategies for urban green spaces, urban planning is mostly focused on public green spaces)

European studies show that people would prefer dwellings with private gardens, and indicate that private gardens have both utilitarian and spiritual meanings for people in their everyday life, which cannot be replaced by access to public green space (Bernardini & Irvine, 2007; Coolen & Meesters, 2012). There is robust evidence on gardens bringing health benefits by providing opportunities for gardening activity (Soga et al., 2017), for socializing, for withdrawal, and for mental restoration (Hartig et al., 2014; Markevych et al. 2017). A private garden may function as an extension of the ‘home’, providing immediate outdoor space, which also has an influence to residential satisfaction (Helgesen, 2015). Studies indicate that the urban private garden can develop children’s sense of connection with nature (e. g. Hand et al., 2017).

Private gardens may not only play a role in their owner’s everyday life, but can also contribute to the overall green space in the city, providing benefits for neighbors through their view from home, and passers-by (Kaplan, 2001; Grinde & Patil, 2009). They also play a crucial role in providing important ecosystem services (like temperature regulation, storm water management, air purification and increased biodiversity) in urban areas (Barbosa et al., 2007, Cameron et al., 2012).

The role of PGS is being contested by changes in planning strategies and subsequent changes in the physical form of cities. The global urban population is quickly growing. In order to preserve farmlands and forests, protect biodiversity from urban expansion, control car usage, and reduce building energy consumption, many cities worldwide have decided to follow the compact city model (e.g. Burton, 2000, Mouratidis, 2017) and focus on densification policies. The compact city is widely considered the most environmentally sustainable option for urban form as well as public policy (Meyer, 2013; Newman and Kenworthy, 1999) and has been endorsed by several leading institutions worldwide (e.g. United Nations, 2012).

Although the compact city model can help preserve nature in terms of forests and farmlands, it has exerted high pressure on urban green space, especially urban PGS. Research shows that access to green space tends to decrease as density increases mainly because PGS decreases (e.g. Bramley et al., 2009). This indicates that PGS is not carefully considered in today’s densifying cities. A possible outcome is that established private gardens are transformed into new housing developments, and that the private garden is not prioritized due to the limited space and affordability issues.

The loss of PGS in cities undergoing urban densification could be compensated by the provision of new public green spaces. By reviewing recent planning studies, one can see that there is much more emphasis on public green spaces and related spatial issues such as the accessibility to public green spaces (e.g. proximity to home, offices and schools), size and provision of facilities (see e.g. Ives et al., 2017). However, there is insufficient evidence on whether the replacement of private green space with public green space can be accomplished successfully (Lin et al., 2015; Haaland & van den Bosch, 2015). The role of urban PGS has been understudied as researchers have mostly focused on the benefits of public green space (see e.g. Pfeiffer & Cloutier, 2009).

Research gaps

Regardless the potential benefits of PGS, scientific research on PGS in an urban context is rather limited compared with research on urban public green space. Moreover, peer-reviewed research on urban PGS in the Nordic countries in particular has been very scarce. In Norway, previous research has mostly focused on the interrelationship between urban densification and public green space (Halvorsen Thoren & Saglie, 2015), while little research has been done in terms of urban PGS. However, we have little knowledge about the consequences of reducing this number. The regulations for outdoor space in new housing developments in Oslo, Norway, have been debated (Boligvekstutvalget, 2016), and there is a call for a stronger focus on the quality of the outdoor space as the amount of such space is decreasing.

Research questions

In order to tackle the knowledge gap in urban PGS in general, as well as responding to the debate in Norwegian planning policies, we set up the follow questions for future research and application: (1) How should PGS be defined? (2) What is the role of PGS in urban sustainability and liveability—when approached from different disciplines? (3) How do people from different cultures and backgrounds perceive (the importance of?) PGS? (4) How to integrate PGS into future densification planning?

Approach and methods

In order to achieve our aim, we have formed an interdisciplinary research team with backgrounds in landscape architecture, town planning, environmental psychology and public health. We will implement both conceptual studies and empirical studies, and combine qualitative (semi-structured interviews, case studies) with quantitative studies (questionnaire surveys). Currently we run the project under a seed fund from our Faculty, which allows us to develop the research ideas and prepare for larger funding opportunities. We are actively seeking national and EU funding at the moment. Depending on the scale of the research project we get funded, the object of research may vary, for example, from either a focused case study of Oslo or a comparative study among European (or other international) countries.

Potential contribution

The knowledge generated through this project has particular meanings to the societal challenges relevant to quality of life and urban sustainability. The compact city model is widely considered as a necessity towards sustainable urban development. However, this model often means sacrificing private gardens and other forms of PGS. Due to the lack of understanding of the role of urban PGS in human needs, we do not know what the omission of PGS means to the social goals of urban sustainability. Therefore, by strengthening and expanding the knowledge on urban PGS, we can form a better vision of urban sustainability and avoid potential negative consequences of removing or limiting PGS from our homes.

We have two dimensions to develop this project: one is to study the urban PGS in the Nordic/Norwegian context, and to provide scientific data support for Norwegian urban planning policies. This is a field in demand, and has special meaning today, since Norwegian government is seeking a low-carbon model for housing development, and there is a risk of sacrificing PGS in urban living. Our studies aim to help planners and policy makers be aware of this issue, and contribute to current societal debates on urban quality of life. The other dimension is to study the need of PGS in different cultural, economic and political contexts, therefore to make knowledge applicable internationally. In both cases, we hope our research provides a timely and balanced view and add a new dimension to urban sustainability studies.

Urban regeneration for safer cities: eco-cultural strategies as a tool to enhance urban resilience to risk

Marialuce Stanganelli1, Carlo Gerundo1,

1Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering - University of Naples Federico II, Naples, 80125, Italy
stangane@unina.it

Abstract

Although blue-green infrastructures play an important role in cities climate change adaptation and natural risk reduction, they are still not considered a priority of urban action since there are not clear methodologies able to show that they could produce effects that would be much more beneficial than the ones achievable with grey infrastructures.

The paper proposes a new proactive approach to disaster risk reduction and describes how the combination of blue-green infrastructures with urban regeneration, economic development and social enhancement, could join regulative and regenerative function with urban resilience increasing. The case study of the Vesuvian coastal area, in the metropolitan area of Naples, Italy, will be presented.

Keywords: urban eco-cultural infrastructures; volcanic risk; cultural resources, blue green infrastructures, resilience.

Introduction

Green and Blue Infrastructures could have an important role in improving climate change adaptation, such as regulating ambient temperatures and reducing storm-water runoff, increasing mitigation of natural risks, and enhance ecological performances of landscapes, as well as affording recreational opportunities (Matthews, Lo, Byrne, 2015; Jim & Chen, 2008).

Many times risk reduction targets hardly emerge as priorities of urban actions. This is mainly due to the endemic lack of economic resources and to the difficulties found by urban planners into the financially quantification of the cost-benefits of investment in green infrastructure. In fact, their maintenance could turn out to be particularly onerous for public administrations, if compared with grey infrastructures for natural risk mitigation, despite the capacity of blue-green infrastructures to create healthier, safer and more resilient environments, as well as to give new values to poor quality or abandoned landscapes (Mell, Henneberry, Hehl-Lange, Keskin, 2016). Therefore, linking these targets to economic development and social improvement goals could get urban policy makers actively involved in the creation of blue green infrastructures.

This paper promote a new approach to disaster risk reduction. Risk management, climate change, sustainable development, urban and social decay reduction, economic and cultural promotion are mutually interdependent: healthier and wellbeing cities are more resilient to risk, since disasters are the last result of unsustainable economic and social development of an ill-adapted societies. Therefore, in order to increase resilience and reduce risk, multi-target actions are necessary. This mean that each urban action should be linked to urban regeneration; agricultural and ecosystem management, water management and drainage

Therefore, a different “proactive approach” to risk reduction problems must be conceived, breaking down barriers between disciplines, sectorial issues and institutional mechanisms since risk is not a sectorial issue and it cannot be closed in blind enclosures. It is necessary to go beyond an integrated approach toward a rooted consciousness of risk reduction needs in all the sector of civil society, in order to consider DRR no more an ‘add-on’ but an ‘hard-wired’ issue in all key development sectors. It is time to pass from an integrated approach where risk is considered as a separate element to take into account in different sectors to a holistic one where risk is an inseparable part of a crossbreed environment. Communities, developers, decision makers must be sensitized to include disaster risk reduction as an essential part of their actions: it should be no more considered as an external issue in land use and environmental policies but as a basic part of each actions, as one of the sides of a multifaceted reality.

In a new proactive approach to DRR, each urban planning intervention has to represent an opportunity to add a safety gradient to urbanized territories, to upgrade environmental and urban quality, to promote sustainable development, to increase climate change adaptation.

The case study presented is the coastal area near the Mount Vesuvius, in the metropolitan area of Naples, Italy. This area is an extra-ordinary value cultural and natural landscape since it is plenty of archaeological resources (Pompeii, Herculaneum and Oplontis sites) and natural assets (Vesuvius National Park, a 18-kilometers waterfront), which have a scarce accessibility and never have been considered as an integrate and unitary system. Notwithstanding the high value of these cultural resources, tourism neglects this area. Moreover, during last decades the area has seen a rapid and chaotic urbanization giving raise to pollution, natural resources decay, ecological fragmentation and erosion of agricultural soil.

In addition, a high seismic and volcanic risk affects the area due to the Vesuvius, forcing urban authorities to plan emergency plans in a high densely urbanized area.

The idea of the paper is to join the regulative and regenerative function of blue green infrastructures with the enhancement of cultural resources enjoyment and with the needs of volcanic risk management, designing a network of urban eco-cultural infrastructures crossing the area and able to reconcile different needs and to achieve a safer and more resilient territorial system.

Materials and methods

In the Vesuvian coastal area local communities are exposed to a multi-hazard framework: proximity to one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world is combined with climate change effects due to ecological fragmentation, widespread soil sealing and scarce provision of green spaces within urban areas. Since urbanized areas amount to 70% of total area, urban heat island phenomenon is particularly intense. Analyising a high resolution surface temperature map developed by the Province of Naples in June 2005, we estimated an average surface temperature of urban area equal to 31,9 °C and a daily urban heat island intensity equal to 3,1 °C.

High indexes of crowding, unused building assets, unemployment and criminal activities have been producing an environmental social and economic decay that blurs the huge potential of cultural heritage of the area, including the UNESCO archaeological sites of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Oplonti, the Royal Palace of Portici, Miglio d’Oro Villas and so on.

In the last decades, the issue of risk reduction and management in Vesuvian area has been faced at different planning levels. At the Regional scale, the Regional Territorial Plan of Campania, approved in 2008, identified risk reduction as one of the strategic addresses, to be pursued through the improvement of escape routes, the decrease of demographic pressure and building density in this area, and the re-qualification of the overall settlement structure and landscape and environmental system. Municipal Land use Plans are hopelessly outdated, since they were approved between the ‘70 and the begin of the ‘90 and do not take into account risk reduction and resilience enhancement issues at all.

The area is longitudinally crossed by four different parallel transportation axis (A3 Highway, 18 National Road, Tirrenian National Railway, Circumvesuviana Railway) connecting the area with Naples and Castellammare di Stabia which are the nearest yellow zones in the risk map.

Moreover, the Regional Emergency Plan for Vesuvius Risk identifies the risk zones, as mentioned above, dividing the territory in red, yellow and blue zones. The strategy defined in case of eruption is the complete evacuation of the area in three days, as soon as premonitory signals will reach the thresholds that point out when eruption hazard is possible. Evacuation should happen trough A3 Highway, all citizens of a single municipality should reach an Italian Region, identified by the Plan. It has been esteemed that almost the half of population will evacuate the area by their own car. The rest of population must be evacuated by public transportation means. Municipality should have to define evacuation details in their emergency plans. For each municipality, different meeting points outside the red zone are established: San Giorgio, Portici and Ercolano population have to escape in north direction having the meeting point in Naples; Torre del Greco and Torre Annunziata population have to escape in south direction toward Castellammare.

To date, the municipalities of San Giorgio in Cremano, Portici, Ercolano, Torre del Greco and Torre Annunziata have their own plans of emergency and mitigation of hydrogeological, seismic, volcanic, forest and industrial fires.

All urban plans have a greater degree of attention to seismic risk, even if in the case of volcanic risk the analysis are reduced to the indication of the regional hazard map and the evacuation planning to twin regions. No indications and strategies are provided at all for risk related to urban heat island and heat waves.

Analysing the planning framework we highlighted four critical issues:

-many activities of risk management have been promoted but links among them are still missing and interactions at all level are still needed. The problems that emerged are for the most ascribable to the lack of connections among different tasks, different agencies, different kind of understanding risk issues;

-a fragmentation of competencies is evident. Inter-linkages between different initiatives were not fully articulated and risk information transfer among different governance structures involved in risk management was difficult. Inter-institutional arrangements for creation, updating and sharing of hazard and risk information still need to be created;

-there is still a gap between understanding and practice. In particular, land use planning needs to be upgraded in order to consider disaster risk reduction issues and link them to development policies. More efforts are required to bridge the gap between scientific knowledge and policy making. Many times hazard knowledge did not bring local government to act with adequate measures to reduce risk levels;

-financial resources seem to be the main hurdle to disaster risk reduction. While the costs of prevention have to be paid in the present, its benefit lie in a distant future. The advantageous comparison among investment in DRR with cost of disaster response does not seem to be efficacious in promoting more investments in risk mitigation.

Results and discussion

In the case of the Vesuvian Coastline, as previously underlined, the particular morphological-territorial condition (close between Mount Vesuvius and the sea), the parallel sequence of the municipalities and the shared main roadway obligate the stages of analysis and planning to face with a vast area. As regard volcanic risk, the planning activity of the municipalities is limited to the alarm phase, the one where the population leave the municipality to reach safer places outside the Red Zone. Four of the five municipalities considered do not specify the evacuation mode but merely indicates the A3 highway as the only way to escape to safe places. Working on an evacuation plan with a single escape route is in contrast with the well-known principle of redundancy that increase safety conditions. An improvement in security levels could be reached only by multiplying and diversifying the escape channels.

This risk situation occurs on a territory that experienced uncontrolled urban development which led to the presence of a degraded urban tissue, with unused building assets, the closure of historical and archeological heritage against urban context, the lack of public spaces of quality. The general stagnation of local economy after the end of the industrial era has left brownfields, unemployment and social decay. A risk reduction strategy should implement multi-target actions that should not only reduce risk levels, but also promote sustainable development of the area and the regeneration the urban context starting from its own resources.

These objectives could be pursued through the differentiation of escape modes and the realization of a green infrastructure network, which, in case of emergency, allows for a smooth evacuation and a simple landing of rescuers, while, in time of peace, promotes the connection of landscape, cultural resources, historic centers. The network is organized in two green infrastructures, a coastal one and a mountain one, connected by several different urban regeneration axis.

The new network is designed to ensure two different way of use:

-in a time of peace, it is a recreational infrastructure able to promote cultural and ecological tourism;

-during emergency, the coastal and mountain axis are redundancy axis to allow rescue access and evacuation from the area and the urban axis allow the distribution of population between the various emergency areas.

The Blue, coastal, Infrastructure has prevailing gentle mobility, it is conceived as landscape reclamation infrastructure, making it possible to use the waterfront, and to access through a pleasant way, by trekking or biking, to the huge cultural heritage resources of the area. The mountain Green Infrastructure is mainly a naturalistic route, linked to the Vesuvius Park hiking trails and devoted to the development of wine and food tourism.

Conclusions

Risk depends on multiple causes ranging from the morphology of the territory, the functions it hosts, to the degree of urbanization of the analysed area, and it is impossible to evaluate it by the sum of these factors.

This highlights the multidisciplinary of this theme, which cannot be solved by sectorial analysis of a specific technical-scientific field, but it requires the integration of knowledge and skills put in place to achieve a healthier, safer and more resilient city.

Creating Healthy Landscapes:
Urban Strategies to Improve the Quality of Life

Chiara Camaioni1, Ilaria Odoguardi2

1-2University of Camerino, Ascoli Piceno, 63100, Italy;
chiara.camaioni@unicam.it; ilaria.odoguardi@unicam.it

Abstract

For a long time, landscapes have represented places of well-being and this association is even more explicit today; much international research has demonstrated the positive effects that good-quality landscapes have on our health and well-being. The relationship between urban landscape and social “determinants of health” is related to “conditions” that include income and social status, social support networks, education, employment/working conditions, social environments, physical environments, personal health practices, etc.

The Landscape Institute suggests five principles for urban landscapes that are essential to creating healthy places to live: quality, healthy lifestyles, social interaction, healthy opportunities for development, and being restorative, uplifting and healing.

This article presents two projects that promote a new role for the urban landscape according to these principles. The first one is the Scottish policy “Creating Places” for a more attractive place in which to live and work, whose goals are: successful, thriving and sustainable places and communities; greener public buildings that represent good value; and reducing barriers to good quality development. The second project is the “SuperBlock” project in Barcelona. The plan provides a solution to reduce traffic by 21% as well as noise levels. The plan is based around the idea of “superilles”, mini neighbourhoods around which traffic will flow. The result will eliminate the use of many roads throughout the city to create a healthier and more pleasant living environment for the inhabitants of Barcelona.

Keywords: landscape; urban health; policy; practice; conditions

Introduction

The quality of the landscape, together with the quality of spaces and life in the space, has always played a determining role in the construction of premises for society’s greater well-being (Anguillari and al. 2011). Today, this relationship between landscape, well-being, and quality of life is no longer explicit.

In fact, exponential urban development has modified the lifestyle of populations and transformed the environmental and social context in which they live. The population of the twenty-first century is mostly urban and, in particular in cities, problems tied to climate change, demographic change, the impoverishment of biodiversity, the exhaustion of natural resources, the economic/financial crisis, and technological innovation have seriously affected the state of health of individuals and lifestyles. The intrinsically urban dimension of these determinants of the change has placed urban quality at the centre of the international political agenda¹.

For some time, many cities have been involved in programmes and experiences aimed at improving the quality of the urban environment and the life of city inhabitants through policies connected to urban planning and design (Rydin and al. 2012).

Recognizing the potential that the built landscape has in creating policies to improve the health and quality of life, the contribution presented here deals with two case studies: “Creating Places” in Scotland and the “SuperBlock project” in Barcelona. The aim is to analyse the progress being made in this direction.

The first case study regards a programme established by the State to provide guidelines to design city spaces, centring on the quality of life and citizens’ well-being. The second regards a project for urban renewal in which the theme of health and well-being involves the roadway network characterizing the urban landscape, which is renovated to improve the quality of life of inhabitants by providing green areas. In both cases, the role of urban planning and design acquires a fundamental importance in building strategies to improve the relationship between landscape, well-being, and quality of life.

Materials and methods

There has always been a tradition that connects the landscape and health. In 2013, the Landscape Institute committed itself to reinforcing this relationship, identifying five “determinants of health” essential to creating places of healthy living, with the scope of improving the health and well-being of city inhabitants (Landscape Institute, 2013). The five determinants at the basis of places of healthy living are:

1.Healthy places improve air, water, and soil quality, incorporating measures that help us adapt to, and where possible mitigate, climate change;

2.Healthy places help overcome health inequalities and can promote healthy lifestyles;

3.Healthy places make people feel comfortable and at ease, increasing social interaction and reducing anti-social behaviour, isolation, and stress;

4.Healthy places optimise opportunities for working, learning and development;

5.Healthy places are restorative, uplifting, and healing for both physical and mental health conditions.

This approach has been followed for some time in Scotland, where health policies are increasingly centred on community-based assistance and since 2013 have been accompanied by an ambitious political program called “Creating Places”. This is a real political declaration about architecture and place, whose objective is to create quality places capable of supporting communities, respecting the environment, guiding economies, and reflecting the nation’s identity. Starting with the concept that a place’s quality of life has an impact on all aspects of life, the declaration concentrates on the role of design and placemaking in influencing the quality of sustainable places and on the ways in which architecture can and should be integrated with planning, economic development, etc., to respond to Scottish citizens’ demand for quality of life. Design and placemaking therefore imply creative and collaborative processes capable of renewing urban environments. “Creating Places”², based on principles introduced for the first time in Design Places 2001, identifies six basic strategies at the centre of design processes to obtain higher urban standards and higher quality places:

1.Distinctive: Reflecting the characteristics of the site and its context in the design of new spaces, streets and buildings to create a sense of place.

2.Safe and pleasant: Streets and spaces should be appropriately scaled, encourage activity and be overlooked by surrounding buildings.

3.Easy to move around: All new developments must be well connected and easy to move around, particularly for pedestrians and cyclists.

4.Welcoming: People are the main users of streets and spaces so new development should be designed to be of a “human scale” and encourage social interaction.

5.Adaptable: New developments need to flexible enough to respond to future change in use, lifestyle and demography.

6.Resource efficient: Successful places strike a balance between the natural and manmade environment, and utilise each site’s resources to maximise conservation and amenity.

“Creating Quality Places” can offer many advantages in: designing safe, creative spaces; biodiversity and management of water resources in an urban environment; reducing airborne particles; reducing carbon emissions; and improving the microclimate.

Similar political objectives were identified by the City of Barcelona through the creation of an action plan, “The Superblock Programme for 2012-2015”, aimed at improving the quality of life of people, rendering the city more healthy and liveable, and achieving indispensable environmental integrity. This is a way of organizing the city that intervenes on the need to make public spaces liveable, exchanging public space for vehicles with public space for citizens.

The “superblock” originates in the urban plan by Cerdà and consists in a new model of urban organization, of dimensions equal to about 400 x 400 m containing smaller blocks. This is a means of organizing the urban space through a “tartan” network composed of overlapping layers of green spaces, meeting points, structures, pedestrian nodes, streets, and mobility networks that connect the entire fabric of the urban landscape.

The strategic objectives of this programme are to the liveability of public spaces, promote more sustainable mobility, increase and improve green areas within the urban structure, and to preserve biodiversity and encourage social cohesion and collaboration. This is the proper way to consider and model public spaces and what characterizes them: green spaces, mobility, and biodiversity.

The methodological approach proposed responds to the characteristics of the resilient city. Once the areas of intervention and the subjects to actively involve have been defined, the methodology works by relating “typological interventions” and “levels of change”. The interventions are applied proportionally to the capability of a quarter to acknowledge the change, activating initiatives for tactical improvement until a structured project of urban renewal is achieved.

The programme began in 2014, has a duration of four years, and is currently at the end of the phase of experimentation on at least 5 districts in the city, each with different results. One example that falls within the grid in Cerdà’s plan and respects the objectives established by the programme is Poblenou. The “Superblock” project returns continuity to the urban fabric through a design that brings several aspects back to the foreground: biking and walking; rerouting vehicular traffic; situating crossroads in places that stimulate social cohesion and recreation/sports activities; rethinking sections of road to be characterized again by activeness and vitality thanks to opportunities for social interaction; and incentivizing vegetation to improve and guarantee biodiversity.

Results and discussion

The Scottish “Creating Places” policy proposes the objective of creating good-quality places to create opportunities, build lively communities, and contribute to a flourishing economy. The strategy implemented can be used by working in close contact with partners such as A+DS (Architecture and Design Scotland) and by promoting community participation in planning and design choices on the local level. This occurs through participatory activities such as charrettes, and by developing a “Place Standard” assessment tool for housing developments, which will play a key role in accessing government funding for affordable housing.

The case study of Barcelona demonstrates that to improve the urban quality of cities, the well-being of citizens, and to respond to environmental criticalities, it is necessary to think about a structure of design objectives and actions. More importantly, however, rethinking and modifying existing urban models with tools that investigate the small scale is the best way to respond to the need for a really urban context like Barcelona, where the quarters are differentiated by characteristics, possibilities, capacity for change, and problem management.

Conclusion

There is a growing recognition in public policies of the potential of the urban landscape to contribute to improving the health and well-being of city inhabitants. This connection, which pertains to the tradition of cities, is being re-established today through experiences in urban planning and design that centre on the needs of citizens with respect to health and well-being and their empowerment in defining the performance of public spaces and the urban landscape. The case studies referred to in this article are the “Creating Places” policy and the “SuperBlock” project, refining this new interest on the scale of urban policies and the project scale.

1 On various occasions, the World Health Organization (WHO) has shown the importance of promoting health and well-being in the urban environment through the construction of concrete actions. Urban planning and design have been identified as the most appropriate tools to produce benefits and local governments have been encouraged to promote the involvement of local communities and the various players operating in the territory in constructing plans and projects.

2 “‘Creating Places’ considers “place” to comprise the environment in which we live, the people that inhabit these spaces, and the quality of life that comes from the interaction of people and their surroundings. Architecture, public space and landscape are central to this” (Scottish GovernmentCreating Places 2013)

The landscape planning which optimal tool for a healthy landscape

Avv. Prof. Luca Di Giovanni

Ph.D. in Public, Planning and Environmental Law at the University of Florence; Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Florence; Contracted Professor in Information and Editorial Communication Law at the University of Verona; Forlì, 47121, Italy;
e-mail: luca.digiovanni22@gmail.com

Abstract

The aim of this work consists into examining the national law about landscape planning and the regional laws to protect and value the landscape, for verifying if the first and the latter deal with the themes of urban regeneration and sustainable development.

In fact, it seems that the times are mature for a broader reflection, that doesn’t involve only the territory (and, in particular, the landscape) which primary constitutional good to safeguard as such, but rather it focuses on the importance of this good relatively to the life of a specific society, that is the assignment of the right of “healthy landscape”. And such right is based on the art. 32 of the Constitution (right of health), that the doctrine and the jurisprudence extended to the hygiene of the environment, understood in all the meanings (ecological, social, economic and professional, etc.).

For this reason, on the one hand, this scientific work will analyse the law contents of the Code of cultural goods and landscape, that directs the activity of protection and exploitation of the landscape to the respect of the principles of “informed use of the territory” and “less consumption of the soil”, in accordance with the draft law n. 2383/2016 (is currently being discussed in the Parliament) about the protection of the soil and measures to promote policies of re-use and urban regeneration. On the other hand, instead, this work will examine the landscape plans of Tuscany and Puglia regions and the relatives sectorial laws to verify the existence of policies for safeguarding the landscape, directed to improve the quality of this good, starting from the imposition of limits to the new use of soil until reaching to the sustainability of the future territorial transformations.

Keywords: landscape planning, protection of the soil, urban regeneration, healthy landscape.

Introduction

The objective of this Abstract is to examine the legislation in landscape and landscape planning in order to verify if it concerns urban regeneration and sustainable development or, at least, it deals with healthy landscape problems. To pursue this purpose, first of all, this document will take in consideration the subject’s regulatory principles, as they can be found out from the Constitution, the Code of cultural goods and landscapes and the European landscape Convention. Secondly, I will pay attention to the national’s Code and the European’s document, and later I will examine Tuscany law’s experience: the only region, with Puglia, to adopt and approve definitely a landscape planning in according to the rules of the national’s Code. Finally, I will express some summary thoughts about the potentials and weakness of the landscape’s rules, as it is planned from the National, regional, European’s legislator.

Principles

The landscape’s protection is placed in the article 9 of the Constitution and it is a competence of the Republic. With the term “Republic” the Constitutional’s rule means not only the State but also the local authorities. The reference to the landscape together with the historical and cultural heritage of the Nation has determined the assignment to such good the historical and cultural characteristic, with the identity meaning, that distinguishes it from the simple idea of environment, intended in an ecological and naturalistic meaning.

As claimed in the article 117 of the Constitution, the landscape’s protection is conferred to the State as a subject of exclusive legislative competence, while the activity of appreciation is conferred to the regions which, to legislate it, should respect the State’s fundamentals principles established in that subject (concurrent legislative competence State-regions).

The article 9 of the Constitution should be considered with the article 32 that protects the human health as an individual or common interest. From the union of this two articles, the common jurisprudence and doctrine find out the concept of “healthy landscape”, meaning that specific territorial or relational human context that should contribute to the improvement (or at least not pejorative) of his life’s quality.

The healthy landscape’s subject is immediately perceivable in relation with the territory as a place where an individual or a precise community live. The territory, intended both in an ecological (the true natural environment) and identity-cultural sense, should be healthy to allow the achievement of human well-being.

Under this point of view, as far as concerning the human well-being, it helps to remind that the introduction of the European landscape’s convention (an international act adopted from the European Council in 19 July 2000, subscribed in Florence in 20 October 2000 and ratified from Italy with the law n. 14/2006) examines in depth this aspect, highlighting how the landscape should be considered an helpful asset “in human wellness and satisfaction”, in addition to represent “an important element of populations life quality”. Certainly, the underlying philosophy of all convention’s rules is that the landscape represents “the crux of the individual and social well-being” and for this reason, populations should benefit the right to a “quality landscape”.

The cultural heritage and landscape’s Code seems to be based on the same positions expressed by the European Convention. In fact, the entire Code is based on the compliance of some fundamentals principles in the territory’s protection and appreciation, focused on the preservation or the creation of an healthy and quality landscape. Firstly, the article 31, paragraph 6, establishing that the State and the others local public authorities, within all the others subjects that attend on the national territory in practice of publics function, conforms their activities to the “ principles of informed use of the territory and of landscape feature’s protection and the realization of new landscape coherent values, complying with quality and sustainable standards. Essentially, all transformations that involve the territory should be sustainable, meaning protecting the natural and cultural existence also for new generations (art. 132), contributing to build a quality landscape.

There is awareness that the territory represents a limited resource, not renewable, and according to that the landscape protecting’s legislation, as well as all the tools to work on that resource (as for example the landscape planning), are planned to the compliance of “the principle of less use of soil” (art 135, comma 4, lett. c)).

The article 143 of the Code, in providing the minimal and necessary content of every landscape plan, specifics that the same should inevitably identify “the necessary action of the correct insertion, in landscape’s context, of the interventions of territory’s transformation, in order to realize a sustainable development of the interested areas (art 143, comma 1, let. h)). And into the territory’s division in landscape areas should determine also the related “quality’s purpose” (art. 143, comma 1, lett. i)).

Code of cultural goods and landscape

With the study of principles we can say that the Code deal with the “landscape”, preserving the existing goods and creating new landscape values, according to a sustainable vision and an activity to improve the quality of the territory, expressed by the European Convention (art. 132 of the national Code, which imposes the respect of the European Convention and the all different international Convention about this topic).

And this structure is confirmed by the contents more specific of the rules about landscape planning. The art. 135, paragraph 1, in fact, establishes that all the territory must be adequately “known, safeguarded, planned and organized because of the different expressed values by the different areas that constitute it”: this means that the landscape plan carries out four tasks (activity of cognition, of protection, of planning and of management ) on the landscape territory, not omitting any essential detail for its protection and give value (paragraph 2), with the aim to conserve the constitutive elements, to requalify the compromised and downgraded areas, to safeguard the landscape characteristics and to identify the lines of urban and building development compatibles with the different landscape values recognized and protected (paragraph 4).

The art. 143 specifies the contents of abovementioned activities and establishes the faculty for the landscape plan to “identify the primary guidelines for conservation projects, rescue, upgrading, increase in value and management of regional areas, showing also the tools of realization, included the measures of incentivisation”: that is permits to the plan to direct the action on the territory and also to establish the quality and the quantity, in addition to possible targets like incentivisation to pursue the established aim. And, if such rule is red with the art. 145, which allocates prevalence to the landscape plan compared to the other measures of territorial planning and economic programming, so the result is the consideration that the legislator has assigned to the landscape plan a primary role in the protection of absolute and obligatory value. A value which cannot be object of compensation, although fix limits to the property right (like, instead, is for the urban bond), because its protection cannot be discussed for any type of reason or necessity (art. 145, paragraph 4).

The attention for the protection of landscape, in addition, is offered not directly also by the draft law n. 2383/2016 (is currently being discussed in Parliament) about the protection of the soil. Such draft law is, in fact, composed by 11 rules which , in addition to include express references to art. 9 Cost. and to European landscape Convention, deal with the themes and relatives problems about the re-use, urban regeneration and limits to consumption of new soil, fixing the following principle: “we can use new soil only if the activities of re-use and territorial regeneration aren’t possible. In addition to this principle, the draft law is characterized by establishing for the Regions the task to incentivize the Commons to adopt urban regeneration politics with the typical tools of urban law (equalization, compensation and urban incentivisation) and to assign to the Commons the duty of mapping the territory for better knowledge of such good protected.

European Landscape Convention

In addition to what I explained about the principles, the European landscape Convention defines the landscape like “all the territory of the Parts and concerns the natural, rural, urban and periurban spaces. It includes terrestrial landscapes, internal and marine waters. It includes extraordinary landscapes, usual landscapes and those downgraded” (art. 2). The landscape, so defined, in a global significance, is considered “essential element of population’s life, expressive of diversity of their common cultural and natural heritage and base of the their identity” (art. 5, lett. a)), and really for this reason it must be object of safeguard, management and planning, and also integration in the residual politics about the territory (art. 3). In particular, the “management of the landscapes” shows the actions with the aim, in a perspective of sustainable development, to guarantee the government of the landscape for orienting and harmonizing its transformations produced by social, economic and environmental development processes; instead, the “planning the landscapes” shows the actions much forward-looking, with the aim to increase in value, renovate or create quality landscapes (art. 1 and art. 6, lett. d), which establishes the setting of quality landscapes objectives).

The regional experiences: the case of Tuscany and Puglia Regions

The Tuscany and Puglia Regions represent the unique regions which have approved definitely a landscape plan according to the rules of the national Code (in February and in March 2015).

About the Tuscany Region, I can say that the attention for healthy landscape is demonstrated by art. 1, paragraph 1, of landscape Discipline, where is said that the activity of landscape planning must be adapted to the principles of sustainable development and aware use of the territory and must to protect, with sustainable aims (must be guaranteed the conditions of reproduction, the sustainability of uses and the durability: art. 6 and 24), the so-called territorial heritage (concept established also by art. 5 of regional law n. 65/2014), that is that common good constitutive of the regional collective identity, which originates by the coevolution between natural environment and human settlement, which represents a value and a source of prosperity for present and future generations.

The Tuscany landscape plan, therefore, pursues the abovementioned principles by the reduction of new soil occupation, the conservation, the restoration and the promotion of the particular characters of social, cultural, environmental, agricultural and manufacturing identity of territory, from which depends the value of Tuscany landscape, and pursue a development of rural territory and cities capable to conciliate competitiveness, environmental quality and landscape protection to obtain a higher quality of life and higher well-being of the society (art. 1, paragraph 2). Such aims are realized also by realization of precise projects for the landscape (art. 34), with the aim to give concrete realization to the quality objectives of single landscape areas in which is divided the regional Tuscany territory.

The regional law n. 65/2014 (art. 217) has established also that “the Region promotes and incentivizes the environmental sustainability, the saving of the resources and the energetic production in the realization of public and private building activity, and also the activity of urban regeneration (Title V, chapter III), inspired to the principles of ecological district with the aim to pursue the energetic self-sustainable by the integrated use of renewable sources, the resilience to climate changes, the rational management of resources, , the use of technologies with low emission of carbon, the sustainable multimodal mobility system”.

As far as concerning Puglia, in addition to general rules (for example the art. 1, paragraph 3, of the Discipline of plan, providing that “the PPTR pursues, in particular, the promotion and realization of a socioeconomic self-sustainable and durable development and a conscious use of the regional territory, also through the conservation and the restoration of social, cultural, environmental identity aspects and particular characters, biodiversity’s protection, new coherent, integrated, landscape’s values, responding to quality and sustainable standards), very similar to whom in Tuscany, it can be noticed that, into the landscape planning’s strategic Scenario, there is a part, called “projects for the regional landscape” (art. 21), that contains actions for the development of territory’s environmental quality. An effort gained through the realization of the followings generals aims (art. 27): to improve the territory’s environmental quality; to appreciate the cultural-settlement identity heritage; to requalify the degraded landscapes of contemporary urbanizations; to appreciate the aesthetic-perceivable structure of Puglia’s landscapes; to guarantee territory and landscape’s quality with the development of renewable energies; to guarantee territory and landscape’s quality in requalification, re-use, and new realization of productive activities and infrastructures; to guarantee the building, urban and territory’s quality in residential, urban and rural settlements.

The combination of these generals aims rough out the planned vision of the strategic scenario in a medium-long period, wanting to put in value, in sustainable and durable forms, the elements of identity heritage, increasing the landscape’s quality of the entire regional territory (art. 28).

Conclusions

Corresponding to the opinions expressed into previous paragraph, I can formulate the following final considerations:

1) the landscape good is protected and appreciated by national and foreign normative documents, according to environmental quality and territorial sustainability criteria. The rules of landscape plan, in fact, must be in compliance with the principles of sustainable development, of less use of soil, of informed use of territory and must permit the creation of new quality landscape;

2) the landscape plan, being the planning tool hierarchically prevalent compared to all the others plans (urban and sectorial plans), has a privileged position and a cogent strength to realize the abovementioned principles;

3) in addition to the landscape plan there are the regional laws, with the aim to use less territory and realize good practices of urban regeneration and new sustainable building.

In conclusion, the Italian normative discipline is moving the attention on such environmental themes with the aim to guarantee to the citizens and the referred society a healthy territory (and, in particular, a healthy landscape).

Landscapes of cohabitation

Claudio Zanirato

DiDA-UNIFI, Firenze, 50121 , via della Mattonaia 8, 055.2755410, Italia
e-mail: claudio.zanirato@unifi.it

Keywords: landscapes; maintenance; prevention; safety; coexistence;

Abstract

The built up landscape is always the result of a coexistence in which opposites often touch giving life to forms and even extreme cohabitation. Nowardays the inhabited territories overlook the equilibrium that they are founded on and neglect the urbanized areas and their environmental surroundings. The economies that support the same territories are changing: the government of ongoing transformations, connected to the old and new economies of our territories, always pass starting from the edge of the city. From the redefinition of its external image, which for a long time was the only space where you could imagine venues and scenarios of change, substitutions and new attractiveness. The care of environmental assets can work with these transformative processes in order to coexiste harmoniously.

The land-protection policies for the new widespread building interventions to enhance existing and already compromised buildings or areas, to prefigure a sort of urban “up-keeping”. By widening our awareness, even the environment of the city needs a lot of maintenance, due to its excessive exploitation or absolute neglect. On this second level, beyond the critical approaches, it is more difficult to think and implement active policies of strategic interventions. It would seem appropriate to seek an alliance between these two dynamics, not to see them as opposition, but to imagine the construction of new landscapes, their conservation/ maintenance through prevention.

An important design project proposed for the Municipality of San Giuliano (Pisa) where we have tried to implement alternative ways of coexistence between new buildings and “care” of the anthropized landscape. The project area is located on the plains around pisa, ‘pianura pisana’, between Monte Pisano and the Arno River, nearer to the latter.

The Pisan plain is strongly characterized by the reclamation system and by drainage and trenches that surround the fields, creating a network that sometimes has a role of connection with the urban and building fabric.

The reclamation system plays a fundamental role; as a historic landmark, as an essential component of the landscape and its role in the ecological network of links between Monte Pisano, the Arno River and its valuable floodplain.

The land subject to intervention is part of a large area intended for rolling works, a constraint placed as a result of a hydraulic reorganisation project for the North-East basins of the Municipalities of Pisa. Coordinated by the Rivers and Fossi Reclamation Consortium of the Province of Pisa, as part of the Program Agreement for the transfer of the University Hospital of Pisa and the University Center activities from S. Chiara to Cisanello.

The Consortium project plans to ease the drainage network pressure from the Dead River, which is substantially overloaded and the only outlet to the sea by constructing a drainage system for the discharge of water into the Arno river.

The research has defined the hydraulic loads and volumes needed to be disposed of and stored, and have come up with a design solution that allows the realisation of the “ Science Technological Park Sant’Anna - San Giuliano” to be compatible and inline with the territory’s hydraulic defence requirements.

The realisation of the Science and Technology Park is foreseen inside the cavity 1, over an area of about 43,000 square meters, to store approx. 33,480 cubic meters of water, to which 3,500 cubic meters are added to compensate for the realisation of waterproof areas. The car parks necessary for the new structure must be placed at a security level of a minimum of +2.00mslm, while the buildings (including greenhouses) at a height of at least +3.50mslm.

These are the preconditions that have led the governing bodies of the ‘Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna of Pisa’ to initiate the procedures to develop the project “Science and Technology Park - Life and Environment Sciences”. They are aimed at the creation of a new research infrastructure, at the forefront in the fields of environmental protection and enhancement, oGnomic Systems, new energies, advanced biomedical and sustainable agriculture.

In this Park, scientific activities related to the various disciplinary sectors related to the School will need to cohabit, with the aim of pursuing an effective and real synergistic integration.

There will also need to be space for activities related to incubators for new businesses, spin-offs emerging from the initiative of young researchers or from the collaboration with private companies in the high-tech sectors. It would also be highly useful and beneficial to have enough space for residential social centres. Meeting spaces, areas for experimental greenhouses, climatic cells, growth chambers.

The main feature that highlights the area of intervention is its absolute condition of limit: on the fringe of the Pisan conurbation that laps the countryside, “encroaching” in the territory of San Giuliano Terme, tangent to the fast road F.Giovannini- Moruzzi, within a larger, expansive area. The proposal of the Guide Project, drafted and approved in 2015, interprets all these extreme conditions explicitly.

To occupy a part of cultivated land (now an enclave) encourages us to acknowledge that the urban landscape must dialogue with the agricultural sector, that architecture needs to respect and blend harmoniously with the nature of the crops, the agricultural structures, the reclamation works, the network of the ditches and trenches.

The relative marginality of the area derives from its being land of reclamation, made “habitable” only in recent times, torn from the dominion of the great river, its meanders: the hydrological risk that weighs on the area reminds us of all this and its edificatory possibility has to deal with a reality.

The altimetric differentiation, which will be expected to be made respecting the countryside plan to allow the establishment of the Research Center, raised inside the expansion tank represents a critical element in the relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces, as well as environmental characterisation.

To avoid widespread deep excavation and to meet the construction requirements of the rolling crate, it was considered appropriate to extend the reservoir also to part of the intended area for parking (only for returns higher than 30 years), and placing the storage tanks below (which remain at the marketing quote and security level of +2.50slm).

The two lateral side, intended for parking, mediate the height of the building construction plan and the concentration of the green area of the main cavity, which will therefore be less excavated.

With this “expansion” of the hydraulic constraint it was possible to think of one of its environmental enhancement designs, taking into account altimetric variations of the soil, with differently articulated additions and excavations, to also better approach the “raised” settlement to a mandatory quota of 3,50m, to its immediate external appliances, with variable altitude between 2,50m and 0,50mslm.

All the pipelines and reservoirs that store part of the water, will simply be placed under the unbuilt areas (car parks or central pedestrian routes).

A further technical possibility that has been taken into consideration is associated with the nature of the land that is inconsistent, being a newly drained floodplain: the foundations of new buildings will of course take this into consideration (to counteract the inevitable failure expected in the years following the completion of the works), resulting in an additional basement technical plan (to house the compensation jacks). The building will “float” above this room, planned for a series of artificial reservoirs, controlling any episodes of flooding.

In this way it is possible to introduce the solution to the problem of preserving the hydraulic invariance induced by the construction of the area by activating these multiple possibilities. Finally, a part of the bottom of the rolling crate will have to be further excavated to obtain the compensation receiver volume.

The stratigraphy of the excavation land highlights the possibility of deepening the earthworks and therefore it will be possible to make this presence coincide with that of a permanent pond (of environmental compensation, along the ecological corridor). The lifting pumps can guarantee the stable water level of the reservoir and a necessary water change: the feeding of the artificial reservoir can be associated with the collection of rainwater and its irrigation reuse, for the conservation of green areas, the cultivation and operation of experimental greenhouses.

This concrete example of study shows how realistic and possible it is to create the premises for the design of an integrated “landscape” and its actual maintenance, a necessary balance between conservation and transformation. Preserving the qualities of the territory signifies the importance of continuous maintenance and this can be made compatible with sensitive urban and architectural interventions.

Environmental educational potentials in school grounds,
Budapest (Hungary)

Jákli Eszter1

1Szent István University, Budapest, 1118, Hungary
e-mail: jaklieszter18@gmail.com

Keywords: children, landscape architecture, environmental learning, urban environment, nature exposure

Abstract

School grounds are potential spaces for childhood exposure to nature which is essential for the success of environmental education as well. The potential of environmental education is analysed in school grounds in Budapest, through different steps: analysis of databases and surveys, as well as fieldwork. Schools were chosen based on different aspects, like urban context and location, size of the school ground, and curriculum which all showed correlation to the possibilities of environmental learning. In general school grounds primarily serve for the active movement of students, for play and sport, while environmental education usually is only able to find its place where enough open space is given for creating this additional function in areas that are less centred and quieter.

Keywords: children, landscape architecture, environmental learning, urban environment, nature exposure

Introduction

Childhood exposure to nature is essential for many reasons, as – besides many other benefits – it can result in higher environmental awareness as an adult (Broom, 2017), contributing to the long-term success of environmental education. As more and more children live in urban environments, there is an increasing importance of creating green areas in cities where they are given the chance to connect to nature. In many cases school grounds are almost the only places where urban children can be exposed to nature on a daily basis (Rivkin, 1995), thus the proper design of school grounds has become an important task for landscape architects, to potentially contribute to the wellbeing of children as well as to the success of environmental educational activities of schools.

The present study focuses on school grounds in primary schools in Budapest. The aim is to analyse how environmental educational goals - both direct (e.g. school gardening, outdoor classes) and indirect (e.g. learning by playing, being in nature) - appear in the use and design of school grounds. The research studies how schools participate in different environmental educational programs, how green areas are used to support them and whether there are significant differences between the open spaces of different schools. As a result, the study draws the picture of the overall situation of school grounds in Budapest (mostly in terms of environmental education).

Materials and methods

An official database has been obtained of primary schools operating in Budapest (KIR, 2017), completed with the list of schools participating in the main environmental educational programs present in Hungary: schools owning the “Ecological school” title (i.e. participate in a country-wide program for schools with a strong emphasis on environmental educational in their curriculum) (OFI, 2018), schools participating in the program of Iskolakertekért Alapítvány (Foundation for School Gardens) (IA, 2018) and schools that obtained the “Bird-friendly school” title awarded by Magyar Madártani és Természetvédelmi Egyesület (BirdLife Hungary, or Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society) (MME, 2018). An online survey has been sent out to all primary schools of Budapest, from which 77 schools answered the questionnaire. Based on the analysed databases and their answers, approximately 25 schools were chosen for further fieldwork, according to different aspects like urban context and location, size of the school ground, and curriculum.

Results and discussion

There are 351 primary schools (excluding primary schools sharing the same building and school ground with nursery schools), among which there are 129 “Ecological schools” (37%). 26 schools (7%) participate in the program of Iskolakertekért Alapítvány (Foundation for School Gardens), and 43 (12%) in the “Bird-friendly school” program.

Amongst the 77 schools who filled the survey, 50 (65%) has the “ecological school” title, 13 (19%) participates in the program of Iskolakertekért Alapítvány (Foundation for School Gardens) and 24 (31%) in the “Bird-friendly school” program. 32 schools (42%) participate in 1 of the 3 environmental education related program, 23 (30%) in 2 of them and 3 (4%) in all of the 3 programs. It can be stated that schools participating in some kind of environmental educational program had a significantly higher willingness to fill a questionnaire related to environmental education and school grounds.

76 of 77 schools have a school ground, however one school situated in the inner city has no school ground due to the lack of open spaces, despite of obtaining the title of “Ecological school”. The most common functions on the school grounds are the following: sport field (70), playground (63), resting area (59), active area (41), and vegetable garden (32), which shows that active movement and play is the primary function: they are present in almost every institution while vegetable gardens, which are places for learning, are only about in the half of them. Open space classrooms (8) are not common, however, according to teachers occasionally classes are hold outdoors as well. Besides the main functional elements, there are some elements that can potentially support environmental learning as well. A significant number of schools have bird tables (56) and compost (46) in the school ground. 14 schools have different kind of objects that help learning, e.g. sundials, weather-stations, etc. and 4 schools have created small ponds on their grounds.

Based on the fieldwork carried out in the chosen school grounds, the main findings are the following. The presence of environmental educational functions often depends on the size, urban context and location of the school grounds, as well as the curriculum of the schools. Besides this the willingness of teachers is necessary and thus also has an impact on the current situation. Aligned with the questionnaire, almost all analysed schools have sport grounds and playgrounds, and other active areas which are considered places for active movement and play. In terms of environmental educational purposes, vegetable gardens are the most common, in some places they are completed with fruit trees as well. These are obviously areas for learning and activities are always supervised by teachers. Amongst the studied schools there are also many examples for microhabitats and even semi-natural areas in the schoolyards. These can be as small as (natural or artificial) bird nests, or ponds, or more extended areas like a hillside area with native trees or a large meadow with a creek, open for discovery. In some cases both the vegetable gardens and the (micro)habitats are limited in use (namely they are closed and only accessible at the presence of teachers), in others they are accessible all day long. It can be also stated that the schools situated in the suburban zone of Budapest occupy bigger plots which allows them to place functions other than the active zone with sport fields and playgrounds.

The situation of the vegetation is doubtful. On one hand, it provides shade, a positive microclimate and contributes to the well-being of kids (Wells and Evans, 2003; Wells, 2000; Kuo, Bacaicoa, Sullivan, 1998), as well as being a potential subject for observation and studies (Malone and Tranter, 2003). On the other hand, according to teachers, using the vegetation as a teaching material is not always practiced. Another problem is that due to the lack of space in many school grounds, grass and even small bushes are trampled which impedes both of the above mentioned positive aspects and the educational potential as well as the appearance of the school ground.

Conclusions

Environmental education today is an important and a must have element in each primary school’s curriculum. To be able to carry out environmental education more effectively, it is essential for schools to have open spaces where these activities can take place besides the classrooms. However according to the results of the study this is not given in many cases. Due to the lack of space (e.g. in the case of schools situated in the densely built inner city) many cases environmental education function is only able to find its place inside the school building, and the school ground (if there is one) is primarily serves the active movement of students. Environmental education is in most cases only present – if there is the willingness of the school and the teachers - in school grounds where enough open space is given for creating areas that are less centred and quieter, whether they are vegetable gardens, microhabitats for birds and other animals or “wild” areas with lush vegetation.

As a carry-on of this study, the use of school grounds and children’s preferences will be studied as well. The final goal is to set up a typology of school grounds based on their potentials in environmental educational use, and to understand how this function could be strengthened by landscape architecture’s design means.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank for Réka Könczey and Erika Saly for providing useful insights about the ecological school movement as well as for all the data that was provided by them. I would like to thank also for all the schools and teachers that have answered my survey and who let me visit their institutes and school grounds.

Adaptive design through nature-based technologies and solutions: an innovative process characterising urban regeneration

Maria Beatrice Andreucci1, Silvia Coccolo2, Dimitra Theochari3, Emanuele Naboni4

1Sapienza University of Rome, Faculty of Architecture, Rome, 00196, Italy; 2École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, 1015, Switzerland; 3National Technical University of Athens, 10682, Greece; Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl, 88662, Überlingen, Germany; 4The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, 1435, Copenhagen, Denmark.
e-mail: mbeatrice.andreucci@uniroma1.it

Keywords: Climate-adaptation design; Environmental technological design; Regenerative urban design; Research through design; Urban Green Blue Infrastructure

Abstract

Within the built environment, a shift is occurring in the sustainable agenda from a narrow focus on improving building energy performance and minimisation of environmental impacts, to a broader framework. The latest is defined as Regenerative, as it embraces and adapts the built environment and its infrastructures to climate change, placing the urban ecosystem and the people at the core of the design task. Whereas the theoretical level of Regenerative Design is defined, the potential benefits of nature-based solutions and technologies are seldom exploited in practice. Implementing Regenerative design at the urban scale means to integrate solutions for energy transition, sustainable water management, human comfort and health, food security. The proposed contribution, developed under the framework of the on-going COST Action CA 16114 RESTORE ‘REthinking Sustainability TOwards a Regenerative Economy’, presents the multi-disciplinary challenges of exploring adaptive regenerative urban design through a selection of case studies that deploy nature-based technologies and solutions. The focus is on evidence-based design vis-à-vis the achievement of resilient, healthy and inclusive urban landscapes.

Introduction 

Only recently the research that supports Urban Design has gained ground with a shift towards a broader framework that embraces and adapts to climate change and places the multiple values of urban ecosystems and people at the core of the design task. Such approach is defined as Regenerative (Lyle, 1994).

The word Infrastructure has long been synonymous with “engineered systems that support specific functions of modern industrialised society: transportation, energy, water, military, etc.” (Belanger, 2010). Within this narrow focus, infrastructure and conventional networks are “grey” in that they ignore or suppress the “green” multiple functions that preceded them (Doyle, & Havlick, 2009).

The Regenerative paradigm suggests broader approaches. Green Blue Infrastructure (GI) has recently arisen as an ‘appropriate’ (Schumacher, 1974) “multi-functional technological approach to re-integrating essential ecosystem services back into the urban built environment, developing adaptive, resilient buildings, neighbourhoods, infrastructure and cities” (Andreucci, 2017).

A Restorative design embraces concepts embedded in the Green Blue Infrastructure approach, such as evidence-based design for climate-adaptation, and/or resilience-building (Eisenman, 2008).

Materials and methods

Several case studies (both simulations and monitoring) have already been conducted internationally on this topic, with some of such research-through-design projects becoming recognised urban guidelines at municipality level that all future projects need to abide by.

Some of the selected case studies developed by the authors (Rome, Geneva) will underline for instance how UGBI and NBS can decrease the mean radiant temperature, positively improving the microclimatic conditions. Consequently, optimizing the human comfort and health, as well as reducing the energy demand of buildings. It is quite important to underline that a sound landscape design is the key to fight the climate change, being able to mitigate the heat waves, as well as the urban heat island effect.

Urban mitigation by greenings. The Geneva case study (Coccolo et al., 2018)

While some others projects (Stuttgart, Berlin, Copenhagen, Singapore, Rome) will highlight how the term climate-adaptative cities (Parry et al., 2007) could also be understood as a synonym to Sustainable Urban Water Drainage Systems (and Sponge City development in other geographical contexts), and can be defined as a set of design strategies, guidelines and solutions to strengthen the natural hydrological cycle of the site, i.e. reduction of stormwater run-off, water treatment and storage on ground, reduction of water discharge to the municipal sewer by the use in practice of nature-based technologies and solutions, such as detention, retention, conveyance, infiltration, evaporation, transpiration, storage and groundwater reservoir recharge in a natural way.

Scharnhauser Park, Ostfildern Stuttgart, Germany. Photo credits Dimitra Theochari

Results and discussion

The development at an international level of concepts and ideas behind the urban green blue infrastructure design approach are discussed, exploring interpretations and applications with respect to different strategies towards climate-adaptive and resilient design, at different scales.

The selected case studies illustrated represent the evidence for the necessity and urgency to focus on nature-based solutions and technologies, thus giving the right emphasis on the restoration aspects of climate-adaptive urban design.

Conclusions

While the theoretical level is widely defined, the potential multiple benefits of the Urban Green Blue Infrastructure approach (UGBI), with respect to climate-adaptive and resilient transformation of the built environment, are seldom exploited, due to a lack of understanding of the scientific knowledge that supports regenerative solutions.

A regenerative climate-adaptive urban design deploying nature-based solutions and technologies (NBS) has indeed several measurable implications, being able to combine recreation with flood risk management, heritage with urban cooling, health promotion with economic growth and social inclusion (Andreucci, 2018).

As future work, in the frame of the COST Action, several international case studies will be analysed (with a focus on dismissed industrial areas and historical districts), providing guidelines for a restorative urban design, focusing on the UGBI applications. Based on the results, and thanks to the training school and the participation of architectural studios, the analyses performed will be fully integrated within and supported by the real architectural practice.

Acknowledgements 

The authors would like to thank Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl for providing the information from their online sources on the projects of Scharnhauser Park, Cloudburst Masterplan, and Bishan Ang Mo Kio Park.

Ergonomic Urbanisms: therapeutic or preventive regeneration process?

Gennaro Rossi1

1DiARC_Dipartimento di Architettura, Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II”,
Napoli, 80134, Italy
e-mail: gennarorossiarchitetto@gmail.com

Keywords: regeneration, urban voids, landscape, health, taking care

Abstract

The evaluation of the advantages and the drawbacks of what has been considered as technological progress since the postwar era is almost blurred. Although industrialization provides easier solutions for our everyday activities, it is obvious that an opposite process of damage to the environment and the community, expressed by pollution and collective detachments from reality, has been influencing our living. It seems that the issues that contemporary society is dealing with, as either integration or identity of the cities, have the same beginnings. According to Sigfried Giedion, “technical knowledge has not yet been absorbed and humanized by equivalent feelings” causing phenomena of dissociation of personality. The reclaiming of industrial areas and the regeneration of urban voids, meant as a design process that takes into consideration either social and environmental features and merges programs, morphology, history, climate and landscape characteristics, represent the way through which the city might face the continuously rising diseases and succeed in taking care of its “sick” body. This contribution aims to highlight how fundamental is the role that architecture and urban planning play in a chaotic reality. Observing many projects of architectural, urban and landscape regeneration, as the High Line in New York city by Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Superkilen by Topotek 1, BIG Architects, Superflex in Copenhagen, it may be maintained that the creation of urban and spatial configurations, which are able to interpret socio-cultural and environmental needs, triggers a virtuous cycle of social interaction, physical and psychic health phenomena. Several cases study demonstrate that the revitalization process of disused and degraded spaces in urban and peri-urban areas acts as positive catalyst agent provoking new expectations and hope. The idea of a city that is concerned about community well-being generates in the mankind a mutual attitude of taking care. Architecture, urban planning and landscape architecture ought to leave their anxious behavior and work for prevention trying to provide positive solutions for the environment. It may be necessary to use a “negative capacity” so as to unify all problematic aspects we are surrounded by and develop an “optimistic vision over the long term”.

Keywords

regeneration, urban voids, landscape, health, taking care

Introduction

Nowadays an alarming disorder seems to characterize urban planning strategies.

The evaluation of the advantages and the drawbacks of what has been considered as technological progress since the postwar era is almost blurred. Although industrialization provides easier solutions for our everyday activities, it is obvious that an opposite process of damage of the environment and the community, expressed by pollution and collective detachments from reality, has been influencing our living.

It might be observed that the issues that contemporary society is dealing with, as either integration or identity of the cities, have the same beginnings.

According to Sigfried Giedion’s interpretation of the second postwar, “technical knowledge has not yet been absorbed and humanized by equivalent feelings” (1) causing phenomena of dissociation of personality. Even though they belong to different historical periods, this reflection shows some analogies with the remarks expressed by doctors and scientists about the pathologies that appeared in the XX century, as obesity, allergy, cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease. The study of biological characteristics of our organism emphasizes the difficulty of human body to adapt to the unexpected changes that we have been witnessing during recent decades. (2)

Pollution seems to hold out against any attempt of control. Despite collateral effects of technology are already clear, hi-tech is often employed in the effort to take care of the illnesses of the city. The possibility to provide super-healthy inner microclimates thanks to materials and techniques of latest generation and the ever-growing request of NZEB might provoke a superficial approach to the issue of sustainability. Furthermore, the conversion of the city into a deeply individual community ensues from the lack of urban development planning: spotty redeeming isolation areas are growing rapidly while the non-built volume continues his degenerative process.

Reacting to the undeniable need of smart cities through the medicalization of architecture represents a risk that contemporary society ought to avoid. In a reality that is hugely influenced by global warming wondering about the ultimate scope of architecture and urban planning seems to be necessary.

Materials and methods

Models of healthy public spaces.

This contribution aims to highlight how fundamental is the role that architecture and urban planning play in a chaotic reality. Observing many projects of architectural, urban and landscape regeneration it may be maintained that the creation of urban and spatial configurations, which are able to interpret socio-cultural and environmental needs, triggers a virtuous cycle of social interaction, physical and psychic health phenomena.

The High Line of New York (figure 1) by Diller Scofidio + Renfro represents a model of both social and urban renewal. The ambitious strategy adopted by the American architecture firm to re-activate an extended area of New York City might be read as the translation in substance of three concepts: interaction, variation, transparency. The flooring treatment is a clear recollection of the railway line which used to connect Midtown to Greenwich Village and a right combination of the innovative interpretation of Memory with the fluency of a multifunctional space.

The opportunity of moving in a branching path, going through the existing buildings and discovering slices of the city from manifold points of view, establishes a criterion of variation from the beginning to the end of the itinerary. The High Line appears as a contemporary expression of the literal and phenomenal transparency that were discussed in the second half of XX century (3).

Superkilen (figure 2) by Topotek 1, BIG Architects and Superflex in Copenhagen might be considered as a reinterpretation of the idea of “piazza”. This project draws attention to the capacity of urban planning to catalyze social condensation and dissuade physical inactivity and marginalization. Compression and dilatation of horizontal surfaces, sequences of paved and green areas generate a hybrid spatial configuration.

1. DS+R, High Line, New York City, NY, 2009-2014

2. Topotek 1, BIG, Superflex, Superkilen, Copenhagen, DK, 2012

Results and discussion

Architecture and urban planning as catalysts for change.

Several cases study demonstrate that the revitalization process of disused and degraded spaces in urban and peri-urban areas acts as positive catalyst agent provoking new expectations and hope. The idea of a city that is concerned about community well-being generates in the mankind a mutual attitude of taking care.

The manual Active Design Guidelines, proposed by Michael Bloomberg in 2010, aims to support the creation of healthier public spaces and encourage everyday physical activity. Turning horizontal and vertical connections into the core of buildings might be the most efficient approach to fight the diseases that are caused by a sedentary lifestyle and facilitate integration at the same time. This idea of transforming the space we live in into social active zones highlights the needs of moving from a therapeutic attitude to a preventive one.

New strategies in urban and architecture design demand an increase of bodily exercise and healthy habits promoting active transportation and recreation. Although this kind of social policies might provoke the exclusion of disabled person, the discovery of mirror neurons let to consider that this phenomenon of isolation could balance with the advantages of attending dynamic spaces and the benefits of getting in touch with diverse groups of people.

Sustainable mobility, the support of walking and bicycling, the fully separation between pedestrian and vehicular paths may represent some of the key aspects for future cities.

The reclaiming of industrial areas and the regeneration of urban voids, meant as a design process that merges programs, morphology, history, climate and landscape characteristics taking into consideration either social and environmental features, constitute the way through which the city might face the continuously rising diseases and succeed in taking care of its “sick” body.

Conclusions

Recent academic researches, that evaluate the disorder caused by the exaggerated use of technology and the improvement of health conditions, emphasize the needs of a turning point.

The city may represent the catalyst agent of an epochal change of urban dynamics.

Dealing with the question of identity of the city could mean questioning the idea of architecture itself. In the era of fleeting contents, produced by the internet, and increasing separation between collectivity and urbanity the danger of producing an ephemeral architecture is tangible. Trying to nurse the diseases of contemporary society through a therapeutic strategy might provoke the worthless waste of energy.

Italian policies that handle the issue of sustainable cities have been showing their inefficacy; the practice of “green covering” and “ecological maquillage” should be escaped. Northern American and northern European experiences highlight the birth of a new tendency in architecture and urban planning. Pragmatism of American architects’ projects might represent a crucial resource in the process of identification of a preventive action plan.

The main challenge for architects and urban planner could be the research of new connections between cities, nature and human scale.

Architecture, urban and landscape design ought to leave their anxious behavior and work for prevention trying to provide positive solutions for the environment. It may be necessary to use a “negative capacity” so as to unify all problematic aspects we are surrounded by and develop an “optimistic vision over the long term” (4).

Acknowledgments

This paper is the result of a research that I conduct in the field of architecture and urban planning. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to professor Pasquale Miano for his guidance during the development of the present contribution and his support of my preparation for doctoral studies.

Horticultural therapy for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: a pilot study to evaluate the benefits on stress through salivary cortisol measurement.

Natalia Fumagalli, Roberto Rovelli, Gaia Paparella,
Giorgia Boscaini, Giulio Senes

Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences - Production, Landscape, Agroenergy – University of Milan, via Celoria 2 Milano, 20133, Italia
e-mail: natalia.fumagalli@unimi.it

Abstract

For the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) children, a Horticultural Therapy (HT) program may be useful to reduce stress, provide a balanced sensory environment, increase motivation, apply to a range of developmental levels and to aid the child in generalizing their skills.

The present study aims at evaluating the efficacy of outdoor HT compared to traditional indoor Occupational Therapy (OT) on the well-being of ASD children residents in a nursing home through the measure of the level of salivary cortisol (stress indicator).

A cross-over pilot study involving 8 children residents was carried out in a nursing home in Pavia (Italy) in 12 weeks HT. 275 salivary samples were collected from each participant, before and after HT and OT sessions.

Participation in HT sessions led to an increase in participants’ stress reduction, observed in the salivary cortisol trend. The study seems to demonstrate a best efficacy of HT compared to OT, although the differences are not always statistically significant due to the limited number of people involved in the study.

Keywords: Horticulture; Autism, Outdoor activity, Salivary Cortisol

Introduction

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a pervasive neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by impairments in social communication and restricted, repetitive patterns of behaviour, interests or activities (APA, 2013). The educational treatments - not resolutive - provide structured activities, to develop and reinforce cognitive skills; useful not only in communication but also in the sphere of autonomy, social behaviour and learning. Therapies focus on each child’s specific characteristics to improve daily functioning. Common therapies include applied behavioural analysis, speech, occupational and/or physical therapy, play therapy, and others.

A potential therapy treatment for children with ASD is Horticultural Therapy activities (HT) program (Simson, 1998). American Horticultural Therapy Association define the horticultural therapy as “the use of plants by trained professionals as a medium through which certain clinically defined goals may be met”. HT include plant- and garden-related activities, which have long been used for therapeutic and rehabilitative purposes in light of the innate closeness humans feel towards nature (Kaplan &Kaplan, 1989, Fumagalli, Berto, Barbiero, Barbiero and Senes, 2018). For the ASD children, a horticultural therapy activity program may be useful to reduce stress (Van den Berg & Clusters, 2011), provide a balanced sensory environment, increase motivation (Flick, 2012), apply to a range of developmental levels (Etherington, 2012), and to aid the child in generalizing their skills (Riaz, 2010).

The present study aims at evaluating the efficacy of outdoor HT (Söderback, Söderström and Schälander, 2004) compared to traditional indoor Occupational Therapy (OT) on the well-being of ASD children residents in a nursing home through the measure of the level of cortisol (stress indicator) (Corbett, Mendoza, Abdullah, Wegelin and Levine, 2006, Kirschbaum & Hellhammer 1994).

In children with ASD, circadian cortisol is similar to neurotypicals (Putman, 2015) and therefore can be used as a measure of the level of stress reduction where it is not possible to administer self-assessment questionnaires (Corbett, 2010).

Materials and Method

The present study adopted a crossover design to investigate the stress reduction ASD children associated with horticultural compared to occupational activities. The choice of this design was based on (1) the small number of participants which can take part in activities under proper guidance and monitoring and (2) the large sociodemographic and clinical variability typical of ASD children. One group of participants first carried out HTA and then OT, while another group first performed occupational and then horticultural activities. Each individual thus served as his/her control and comparisons were based on within-subjects than between-subjects variability. Participants guest in a residential care facility in Pavia, Northern Italy. The facility welcomes children from 6 to 16 years old. With the help of the facility staff a group of 8 children was identified by screening available records. Participants were children from 8 to 15, 5 males and 3 females with high functioning autism based on DSM-5 criteria (APA; 2013).

The research protocol was approved by the University Ethical Committee. After presenting the research and obtaining written informed consent by children parents, the participants, divided into two groups, (G1 and G2) participated in two subsequent cycles (C1 and C2) of HT and OT. Each cycle provided six weekly consecutive sessions. In the C1 time, G1 started with HT and then continued with OT and the G2 started with OT and then continued with HT, for the same duration. After four week of washout, in C2 time, the groups inverted the order of the two activities. HT was carried out outdoor on a garden roof protected by a tend, the OT was carried out indoor. The activity protocol is described in Table 1.

Table1. Description of the horticultural activities performed by the participants

Week | Horticultural activities | Week | Horticultural activities
1 | Plant sowing | 7 | Transplanting
2 | Planting bulbs | 8 | Planting and flower care
3 | Propagation by cutting | 9 | Plant sowing
4 | Transplanting | 10 | Transplanting
5 | Planting and flower care | 11 | Food production
6 | Plants harvesting | 12 | Plants harvesting

The horticultural program was derived from a standard treatment procedure (Therapeutic Gardening Activities, Program TGAP) (Fumagalli, Senes, Betti, Bottani and Porta, 2016) which allows (1) to monitor high standards of quality care and cost effectiveness and (2) to replicate the treatment in other settings, making it possible to compare and generalize results of different studies. The TGAP was adapted for ASD children to be consistent with their abilities and skills. The activities were organized in sequence to provide participants with seasonal skill-building activities based upon affordable, readily-available materials for horticultural projects during the spring months. The activities included sowing, planting, propagation, transplanting, flowery plants arrangements, plants and flower care, harvesting and food production (pesto sauce for example). Materials consisted in seeds, bulbs, plants, soil-less potting mix, gravel, pumice stone, pots, scissors, sprayers, snips, watering cans, mortars and pestles. Occupational activities were planned by researches in order to require similar manual skills as those used in horticultural activities and to avoid any living materials, using crepe paper, cardboard, poster board, soft felt. Brushes, pencils, poster paint, scissors and tape were the tools used to prepare the hand-craft products.

Both horticultural and occupational session lasted 45 minutes, sessions were scheduled on Monday afternoon at from 3 pm to 5 pm. From 6th March 2017 to 10th April 2017 (C1) G1 performed HT from 3.00 to 3.45 and OT from 4.00 to 4.45 and G2 performed OT from 3.00 to 3.45 and HT from 4.00 to 4.45. After a four weeks break, the two groups swapped activities during the period between 8th May 2018 to 12th June 2018.

HT sessions were carried out using video-modeling techniques because it has the potential to address deficits in social communication and interaction typical of ADS children (Lee, 2015). Recurrent phases (introduction, dressing, video modeling, cleaning) were be useful to have a “routine” of the work.

Salivary Cortisol Saliva samples were collected for cortisol analyses. This method of collection was chosen due to its non-invasiveness, the independence of flow rate, and because salivary cortisol represents the unbound, biologically active portion of the hormone. Salivettes (a 3.5 cm long cotton roll packaged in a plastic conical tube, Sarstedt, Inc.) were used to obtain the saliva samples. In each session three samples were collected for participant: at 3.00 pm before the first activity, at 4.00 pm between the two activities and at 5.00 pm after the second activity. All samples were assayed in duplicate using the High Sensitivity Salivary Cortisol Enzyme Immunoassay Kit (Salimetrics LLC) according to the manufacturer’s directions.

Results and discussion

A total of 36 salivary samples were scheduled over 12 sessions for each child. 275 samples were collected (95,5% of the scheduled samples): Missing data points were the result of insufficient saliva for the assay process (7 samples) and of non-participation (6 samples). The percentage of obtained data points was very similar across the two activities.

Table 2. Mean Cortisol reduction for Horticultural activities and occupational activities (Post activity level less pre activity level)

N. | Therapy | Mean of Salivary cortisol reduction
89 | HT | - 0,6144 (nmol/l)
90 | OT | - 0,2941 (nmol/l)

Table 3. Mean Cortisol reduction for Horticultural activities and occupational activities x time (Post activity level less pre activity level)

Time | Therapy | Mean of Salivary cortisol reduction
16 | HT | - 0,683 (nmol/l)
17 | HT | - 0,583 (nmol/l)
16 | OT | + 0,744 (nmol/l)
17 | OT | - 1,36 (nmol/l)

As indicated in Table 2, HT and OT demonstrated a cortisol reduction before and after the therapies. The Cortisol reduction after HT is twice that after OT but the interaction therapy x cortisol reduction (p=0.14) was not significant, probably for the limited number of people involved in the study. Table 3 shows the therapy x time x cortisol reduction interaction: HT reduced Cortisol level independently by time, OT continued cortisol reduction after HT but id didn’t reduce cortisol level when it is the first activity.

Conclusion

Results of the current study suggest that (1) the HT program proposed is to be consistent with the abilities of participants and (2) exist a positive link between HT and stress reductions.

The study results should be confirmed with a next undergoing study with a larger number of children to confirm this hypothesis and to investigate interactions x sex, x age and session activities.

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SESSION VII
Green, health and education

Green Health - Contribution of green and open space in public health and wellbeing

David Miller

James Hutton Institute, Aberdeen, United Kingdom
e-mail: David.Miller@hutton.ac.uk

Abstract

Introduction

The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), set a plan for a people-centred approach to addressing global societal challenges, such as addressing poverty, human health and well-being, inequalities and the protection of natural resources. This paper illustrates how international and European conventions and public policies which aim to support human health and well-being through empowering communities and their engagement with landscapes, green and open space. The materials are drawn from research on engaging people in planning urban greenspaces, and European examples of the emergence of social innovation as an agent supporting human health and well-being.

Enabling and achieving public engagement, participation and leadership in the planning and management of the environment, and scales from local greenspaces to wider landscapes, is understood to be significant in achieving the aims of policy relating to human health and well-being, as part of sustainable development. The strategic aims of the OECD ‘Roadmap to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ identify needs for working in transformative ways to implement coherent, evidence-informed policies which address health, well-being and their determinants throughout life-course and across government and society. It seeks advances in governance and leadership for health and well-being, establishing healthy places, settings and resilient communities, with objectives that include engaging local communities and stakeholders in designing and managing places, settings and communities, consistent with the needs of their people.

The European Landscape Convention (Council of Europe, 2000) recognises the importance of landscapes to human well-being, and the significance of everyday areas (e.g. low quality urban spaces) as well as those of outstanding beauty, when advocating public participation in relation to planning and landscape. It builds on the rights of people, as set out in the Aarhus Convention (United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, 1998), to participate, access information, and justice.

Case Study

A transdisciplinary approach to research was used which embedded participatory dimensions to the research, bringing together action and reflection amongst multiple actors from policy makers, practitioners, civic society and researchers. The focus was on a relatively deprived community in the City of Dundee, UK. Participatory and community engagement approaches were used to understand the roles of green and open spaces in relation to public health and well-being, in deprived urban communities. This was in two parts: (i) participatory planning, (ii) Ethnographic study.

(i) Participatory planning

Participatory techniques were used to explore current uses with community stakeholders in the Finlathen Park green space, Dundee, and develop insight to the links between use and human well-being, and how and why people engage with green spaces.

Virtual reality tools were used by community participants to create green space plans, ‘bottom-up’. The interactive models were used in discussions with residents and park users to capture information on the different uses of the park; factors which might deter use such as lack of facilities, anti-social behaviour, footpath quality; means of physical access, and views. The model was then used with people from community groups, elected representatives, planners, community workers, residents – both those familiar and unfamiliar with the area - plus people aged under 18.

Audiences were invited to prioritise topics (e.g. woodland, access, facilities transport, lighting, etc.), and then select individual types of feature to locate in the park. Subsequent discussion of opinions in the group identified options for park management, layout or content which might increase use or other benefits (e.g. personal health, biodiversity, water quality in the burn, social space for different age groups). The geographic distribution of features identified in the engagement sessions led to the mapping of alternative options and associations of key functions within the park.

Figure 1. Left: Features added by local school children to the 3D model of Finlathen Park. Right: An audience of younger people in the Virtual Landscape Theatre

The findings identified the importance of the multiple services provided by green spaces, such as places for relaxation and escape, desires to improve the quality and range of benefits, and the significance to residents of small areas of green space in close proximity to houses for short time periods. The loss of such areas would be more significant than equivalent areas from a larger green space, with implications for public policies which result in the disposal of green space in urban areas.

Commonly expressed uses of the green space for adults and children were for peace and quiet outdoors, a sense of fresh air, and enabling the avoidance of disturbance such as noise, argument, music or television. It is a place for meeting with friends, taking physical exercise, and for fresh air. The green space used for dog walking was most often small in size, the closest to home, and frequently used in the early morning or late evening, at regular times daily, or weekly.

Those familiar and unfamiliar with the specific park expressed similar opinions on certain issues. However, those unfamiliar with the park were unaware of specific issues (e.g. cars parking on grass banks), the loss of a sports building, the level of noise from the major road nearby. Those familiar with the park, older than school age, noted aspects of the history of parts of the areas for anti-social activities (e.g. fights between neighbourhoods) but, significantly, the removal of such experiences over the last 20 or more years.

Based upon the findings, maps of the potential multiple uses of the greenspace were developed with the local community. Figure 2 shows how the park could provide a framework for targeting investment in resources to improve the space, including the enhancement of an environment offering benefits of wellbeing.

Figure 2. Example spatial plan for park and adjacent area derived from engagement events.

(ii) Ethnographic study

In the same area, the local community was engaged in an ethnographic approaches to understanding communities and their use of green spaces showed that meanings of green space. The findings showed that benefits of wellbeing derived from engagement within such spaces vary between people and social groups (Dinnie et al., 2013).

Wellbeing, from the participants’ point of view, emerged as something implicit and common-sense, with the benefits of green space interaction felt later (e.g. children sleeping, felt better, healthy glow, etc.) rather than at the time. This idea aligns with an emerging theory in cultural geography literature that positive states of health are largely invisible; that people give attention to their health and wellbeing only when they are absent (Zeiler, 2010). Positive and negative social aspects of well- being also emerged, e.g. frequent mention of green space as a place for both formal and informal social events; formal and informal regulatory practices which prohibit/discourage some users and some activities at certain times (e.g. nearby secondary school discouraged use by young families during lunchtime).

The two components of this study reinforced each other, highlighting that for a small minority of people the notions of escape and ‘getting away from it all’ are important to green space use and hence wellbeing comes through group activity; this gives their activity meaning and purpose and provides them with a strong social identity in relation to the space. The activities of different groups affected the experiences of others both positively and sometimes negatively, for example, teenagers playing on park equipment can deter mothers and younger children from using it. Findings also revealed that a social value was attached to green networks, providing functions beyond of those of biodiversity of wildlife, for example the ability to use an attractive route when walking from place to place. However, no simple cause-effect relationship was identified between green space engagement and wellbeing. However, for most people the social function of green spaces for meeting people is a key part of their use, including community-led initiatives on environmental maintenance, and hence important to any wellbeing benefits derived.

Emerging Practices

Practices of social innovation are emerging to respond to challenges of addressing human health and well-being. A European Union project SIMRA (Social Innovation in Marginalised Rural Areas) is studying processes and the delivery of social innovation, including innovative governance in agriculture, forestry and rural development in Europe.

The research findings are improving our understanding of how the active involvement of communities, civil society or grassroots organisations in with novel reconfigurations of governance are taking place to improve societal well-being. Amongst the examples of such innovation is Mountain Therapy, for people with disabilities (Italy), which is underpinned by a belief that the person benefit from the knowledge, care and protection of their environment. The Network of Mountain Therapy’s initiative has improved access to, and benefits from, the mountains for people with mental disorders or health issues, and increased the awareness of health providers, that living experiences outside of hospital is of benefit to patients with disabilities.

Other examples of social innovation that delver to human health and well-being, and are integrally linked to use of land and landscape are care-farming (e.g. Möderbrugg, Austria), the use of hippotherapy (treatment with the help of a horse; e.g. Club Arandjelovac, Serbia), and beekeeping for those with disabilities (e.g. Apiform, Bosnia and Herzegovina). Such initiatives are illustrative of how certain locally significant characteristics of landscapes, can be used to for wider societal and environment benefits.

Conclusions

Realising the benefits of the use of land in urban and rural areas for the support of human health and well-being, through community engagement and social innovation, provides new opportunities to link landscapes with broader societal objectives. In particular, they provide a pathway to impact for achieving the UN Agenda 2030 Sustainable Development Goals, linking landscapes, human health and well-being.

The management of landscapes, urban and rural, for achieving such outcomes also deliver on objectives of the Aarhus Convention (UNECE, 1998) empower people and recognising ‘… their right to live in an environment adequate to his or her health and well-being’. Twenty years after its signing, the Convention provides underpinning principles upon which the participation of communities in local planning and decision-making has been significantly advanced.

Acknowledgements: This presentation draws on the findings of the GreenHealth project, funded by Scottish Government (www.hutton.ac.uk/research/projects/green-health), and SIMRA, the European Union Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 677622. Specific thanks to Maria Nijnik and colleagues in the SIMRA project for access to materials; Liz Dinne, Sue Morris and Katrina Brown for the ethnographic research; and Jane Morrice, Chen Wang, Gillian Donaldson-Selby, Paula Horne and David Riley for the virtual reality study.

Water, ground and green systems as re-educational factors to the qualitative sustainability

Rita Occhiuto1

1LabVTP-ULiège, Liège 4000, Belgium
e-mail: r.occhiuto@uliege.be

Abstract

According to E. Meyer “Toxic discourse is an expression of a collectivity of consumer citizens who perceive their environment through the lens of uncertainty and risk”. The fear of “Nature’s” loss, as common good, supports the rise of sanitary policies that remembers the hygienist approach of the 19th century. Then communities risk being blinded by a new Salvationist religion that removes the inhabitant from his own environment. This distancing process produced “gaps” which inhibited the human perception to the point of exiling himself from his own environment. This implies the atrophy of sensorial capacities with consequences concerning the experience loss and the impoverishment of knowledge. This paper explains how the landscape design can intervene in order to reverse the process and return the aptitude to learn by sensitive environmental stimulations. The research shows similarities between two opposites studies cases: on one hand European’s post-industrial sites and on the other African’s slums.

Keywords: Urban green space system; space engagement; from site to place; cinestesic perception; place awareness.

Introduction

Hygienism, in the 19th century, brought great spatial and economic transformations that upset both the image of cities, territories and landscapes as well as the consciousness of living. Today, the notion of “healthy” inaugurates a new cycle of development of regenerative thought. But is it orienting us towards functionalist hygiene or sensory landscaping? Success will depend on the ability to break free of the “toxic discourse” that Elisabeth Meyer attributes to the progressive society from which we come. How to escape to it? History shows a cyclical return to nature themes and green materials to re-qualify living spaces. Today, plants are once again central to societal debates. However, since the middle of the 20th century, the answers still remain in the state of procedures that are limited to measuring the well-being provided, leaving ample room for alarming speeches denouncing the loss or even the depletion of natural resources. There are many moralizing messages calling for a change in lifestyle, but both calls and solutions remain purely functional and quantitative. As in the late 19th century, progressive thinking avoids deeper questions about the quality of relationships with time and space. This shows, on one hand, the fear of nature loss, linked to the rise of the feeling of guilt and, on other hand, the refusal to re-educate the human to project himself concretely into space-matter of landscape which however remains the center of all life interactions (ELC 2000). Re-questioning the “healthy” today could be used to reactivate non-toxic and situated approaches, but only if we manage to re-examine in a critical and prospective way the relationships that human could still be able to maintain with the landscaped materials. Knowing that users have less and less time to live, to experiment (P.Virilio 2000) and consequently to understand their own action’s sites, this reflection calls for the urgency to reactivate the sensory perceptions, supported by the experimentation of the space by the body: a practice of knowledge that distinguishes the landscape approach. Indeed, appealing to the sensory sphere makes it possible to refocus on the modes of knowledge of space from within. The interest of the users thus goes from function to feeling in order to focus the attention on the search for the qualities perceived from the tactile links that inhabitants establish with the materials of their life contexts: relationships of which human communities seem to have lost consciousness and memory. The analysis of this alienation developed in the thesis “The paradigm of the gap” (R.Occhiuto 2004), argues that the call to the body and to any action of lived territoriality has been progressively atrophied because it is not objectifiable and uncontrollable. Thus, distance appeared between actor and place that today takes the meaning of a break between the human and his environment. Therefore, “healthy” makes sense if we link it to the ability to relearn to recognize the space-matter in order to find the capacities to act and interact with the natural forces in progress (ELC 2000) and to reassume the fully role of actors or of landscape’s makers. If acting means making landscape, questioning the environment through the notion of “healthy” can still mean learning through and teaching from places, even when these are degraded or dislocated.

Materials and methods

Water, ground and green systems are both landscape materials and body stimulators. Through the body, the inhabitant is reintegrated concretely into places with which he must relearn how to live and compose in order to pursue an interrupted collaboration, of which he has to find and to revalorize the evolution’s links and rhythms. As landscape agents materials interact with us and influence, promote or disrupt our actions. Thus, we become mutation’s agents or “geomorphological agents” (G.Vogt) that is to say both sensitive (conscious or unconscious receptors) and dependent on the existing physical, hydrological and climatic conditions. It is an interrelation that makes responsible and attentive to the natural actions that determine moving landscapes. These welcome us and contain us, as if they were places that we gradually manage to endorse like clothes. This closely consideration of each environment allows to understand and evaluate all types of site - from the wildest to the most altered or polluted - and helps put them back into play for them to acquire meaning and balanced meanings to bequeath to new generations. In-depth readings of states and stories of progressive construction of sites are the prerequisite for any interpretation of the stages of transformation imposed on places in time. Going beyond the pure description and assuming the responsibility of interpretation, we restore to each place its history, dependent on the actions carried by men on their environment. The resulting narratives give each site the dignity that belongs to it and highlight the combinations of “natural and human” forces and the reasons that guide them. Therefore, we re-examine more precisely the meaning of healthy landscapes and the interpretive risk that accompanies it. In opposing the common sense of sanitation, pollution control, or compliance which was awarded to it by the society of control, we consider it as a guiding criterion for transformation’s hypothesis (projects) coming from studies case seemingly divergent: first, the Belgian post-derelict industrial sites and secondly, the vast territories of diffuse housing that characterize the peri-urban landscape of the city of Kinshasa (DRC). The study of pre-existing or transformed landscape characteristics (learning from one’s environment) leads to the ability to enunciate qualities necessary to modify the existing (learning to prepare for change) and offers the opportunity to interpret the concept of healthy landscapes under the educational aspect. Examining the conditions of the landscape means relearning from places to learn to formulate remedial prospective visions in full awareness of landscapes’ potentials and limits without saturating or unbalance them. “Healthy landscapes” will not refer to reuse by simple functional substitution after sanitation, but rather the ability to reactivate new educational processes aimed at qualification and not just productivity. Learning cycles will be conducted collectively (experts, decision makers and inhabitants) from the fine and responsible knowledge of local landscape conditions to reinvest, that is to say to understand in depth, through the experience and the observation time, to recycle or allocate the site to new prospective construction. Landscape is seen as an active and collaborative agent that human communities must relearn to listen and consider before hoping to exploit it again. Only the listening and responsible management of places can offer positive and non-toxic prospects for the renewal of the relationship between man and nature. Case studies are: Sclessin, one of the districts of the urban agglomeration of Liège (BE) and the unplanned districts of Kinshasa (DRC). If, on the one hand, we recognize the extreme diversity of these environments, on the other hand, we believe that these territories are the result of slow processes of knowledge loss of landscapes that human communities have heavily subjected to their primary needs. Liège used the landscape as a resource to exploit until the exhaustion and saturation of surfaces by the industry and its housing system. Kinshasa used the landscape only as a surface to occupy extensively without any adaptive practice or prior knowledge of the sensitivity of the sandy environments violently occupied. The result today is a continuous “carpet” of building that saturates the landscape. Signs of visible landscape crisis are erosions and floods that helpless people fear and suffer. In both cases the process of exploitation of the environments has reached its ultimate state of rupture. Therefore, sanitation questions arise, but why and for whom? Acting to renew the production methods, so clean and sanitize to re-launch a new phase of landscape stress through production? Or acting to restore rhythms and logics of development respectful of knowledge and landscape times, combining natural and human actions? Paradoxically, periurban landscapes of Liège and Kinshasa similarly ask the societal capacity to move away from pure productivist logics. We could prepare transitions towards modes of exploitation where healthy does not mean clean, ordered or out-of-nature, but on the contrary a renewed, even a completely opposite vision of the sanitation which starts from the understanding of land’s limits and potentials of which we have to appropriate in order to accompany its transformation. By assuming this new beginning, the logic of development would focus more on the creativity of each inhabitant learning continuously from his living environment. This knowledge is not only a carrier of identity and culture, but it ensures an awareness of the capacity or incapacity of places to follow development ambitions and prepares a slower, but certainly more sustainable, landscape change.

Results and discussion

The site of Sclessin / Ougrée, a vast plain adjoining the Meuse upstream of Liège, concerns the mutations of a valley, delimited by wooded slopes, which has gone from rural exploitation to urban saturation, thanks to a strong infrastructural policy that has transformed also the Meuse River into a commercial channel serving the industry. When the industry died, the activities went out and the valley assumed the character of a territory with waiting voids. At the activity followed the silence and at the saturation followed the recess and the presence of lands with a lunar aspect. Only the housing remained which after the disappearance of the industry created island fabrics floating in a desertified landscape. These environments have been waiting for an intervention that, according to the official development model, will go through a first deep cleaning that will then put the land back on the market for new economic exploitations. Kinshasa, a colonial city stretching along the banks of the Congo River and the Stanley Pool, is surrounded by sandy hills, today massively attacked by a system of diffuse housing. These slums are today its landscape, its soul and its punishment, because the spontaneous urbanization has seized a territory as a surface, without knowing the balances maintained between ground, water and vegetation. A square grid mesh has un-differentially covered a tormented orography with fragile soils that the water, channelled in streets-corridors trampled by human, violently crosses during the tropical rains taking away all types of materials unconsciously added by man in environments that he did not take time to know. On the contrary, the fragmented landscape is the expression of a cultural fragmentation visible from heterogeneous construction’s techniques: sheet metal for water men (fishermen, etc.) or earth and brick for men of the land (coming from the countryside). These monocellular landscapes are recreating new collective landscapes that, however, cannot yet form new sustainable landscape systems, despite attempts to create systems to evacuate or absorb water. Erosions, floods and overpopulation are indicators of a total loss of links with natural actions, today considered rather as a punishment or an inescapable evil. The question of regeneration arises. Top down planning is the risk that falls on these territories. This would erase all the natural and human characters, despite the appearance today of popular adaptation-reaction actions that testify the emergence of intelligent forms of resistance or landscape coexistence. In both cases the extreme landscape vulnerability appears, visible through the environmental damage caused: a weakness to be attributed especially to the neglect of nature, due to the loss of knowledge of the systemic rules that keep landscapes alive. The crisis is cultural and caused by forgetting relationships that nobody cares about because the priority aspects are budgetary. Thus, healthy landscapes are, in appearance, those who benefit from techniques to clean and contain nature. While unhealthy landscapes are those that do not have the means to defend a territory of the whims and weaknesses of a nature that is no longer up to human ambitions. This posture produces a continuous dualization of the environments whose risk is the development of specialized places often treated by simple green washing where the landscape quality corresponds only to a green image to which one still grants the confidence. On the other hand, the landscapes disturbed by the human practices of our two cases of study provoke fright, distance and denial. For that it is better to erase signs of suffering.

But is it suffering or experience which re-exploit the knowledge?

Conclusions

Landscapes practices, from R. Smithson, J. Simon or G.L. Le Roy and G. Clément testify that environments hold the experience of bodies in continuous mutation. Affirming the will to question again and again these composite bodies of nature and human culture allows us to relearn to know environments that have become hostile and far away in order to succeed in re-educating and observing links that have become invisible and yet so significant. Thus, regeneration concerns the mind as a prerequisite for a very slow support’s process for landscape’s sanitation. Perceptive links to be reconstructed by the body, in Liège as in Kinshasa, can still be a healthy and available resource that any community can still call upon, before any kind of technicality. Adding value to them adds to E. Meyer’s advocacy, which seeks to redefine a new aesthetic relationship to weaving with landscapes, and meets also Ph. De Boeck’s analysis of Kinshasa where “It’s in and through the body and its functions (occurring and reproducing) that are traced the interconnected multiple practices and senses of the various spaces of the urban context ... the body is one of the few places ... where Kinois can transcend the harsh demands of life ... It’s the place where the geographies, the experiences and the imaginations, personal and collective, meet and merge ». It’s from this active corporeality that the effectiveness of a new practice of Healthy landscapes rests. The elements are simple and available, but their positioning must be renegotiated to focus development precisely at the meeting point of human and natural actions in any context tamed by humans, as the European Convention claims.

Regenerating the Barbaña, Ourense’s foundational river

Cristóbal Crespo González, Felipe Peña Pereda, Cristina García Fontán, Emilio Rodríguez Blanco, Juan Ignacio Prieto López, Óscar Pedrós Fernández, Jesús Conde García

ETS de Arquitectura, Universidad de A Coruña 15001 A Coruña, Spain
e-mail: cristobal.crespo@udc.es

Abstract

Although Ourense in Galicia, Spain, lies by the river Miño, that crosses the whole country from Lugo to the Atlantic in the Portuguese border, the Roman origin of the town1 refers to another river, the Barbaña, as the foundational one. The hot springs of Ourense, known as Las Burgas, are an urban landmark and a historical event as well. All around these natural complex formed by the two rivers and the Burgas, Ourense developed an urban grid that gradually approached the Miño and left the Barbaña, both the river and its margins, abandoned, mistreated and used as a sewage or a dump system.

Through a series of initiatives, materialized in research works and proposals for the regeneration of this area, initially proposed by professors of the ETS of Architecture (University of A Coruña), emerged an intense urban debate in which neighbors, local authorities, public organizations and private operators were involved. There also participated a number of students and teachers from Universities in France and Germany, through the Iacobus program. Coming from regions with ancient thermal tradition, such as Auvergne and Bavaria, the whole experience crystallized in a series of events (meetings, courses, seminars, workshops, exhibitions and publications)2 that offered solutions and proposals for the urban and landscape regeneration, and for the redeeming of these complex and degraded areas for community use and well-being. Students of the Master Degrees in Architecture (UDC) and Landscape Architecture (UDC-USC) were able to develop their Master`s Thesis in this area of the Barbaña river, with very interesting and successful proposals regarding the present topic of healthy landscapes.

The work was broached, in all cases, with a collaborative non-competitive spirit, through a series of different approaches that included the historical, landscape and urban analysis, the programs related to health, wellness, and architectural rehabilitation, among many others.

Keywords: heritage, landscape, regeneration, architecture, thermalism, health.

Introduction

Throughout the years 2015 and 2016, the ETS of Architecture of the University of A Coruña proposed a series of academic works to sensitize the authorities, citizens and the students themselves about the state of abandonment and degradation of the urban environment of the river Barbaña, in the city of Ourense in Galicia, Spain. These works involved around a hundred of undergraduate and Master students in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and a score of teachers. Moreover, the linking of these tasks to the Iacobus program, participated by the University of A Coruña - through the ETS of Architecture -, the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture of Clermont-Ferrand (ENSACF) and the Ostbayerische Technische Hochschule (OTH) of Regensburg, led to a wide range of proposals for the area. These projects proved to be extraordinarily useful to open the reflection and the debate on the possibilities of recovering degraded urban landscapes for public uses related to health and well-being.

Ourense is the third Galician city in number of inhabitants. Its location, in the Miño river valley, makes it a city protected from the strong winds and with a very close relationship with its nature and landscape. Ourense is for sure the thermal capital of Galicia, with more than 100 outcrops of thermal water with remarkable mineral-medicinal properties, good flow rates and high temperatures. It should be noted that hydrotherapy is a common resource in all surrounding areas of Ourense, Clermont-Ferrand (Vichy, Royat, Chaudes Aigues ...) and Regensburg (Bad Abbach, Amberg, Bad Griesbach ...), which reinforces the interest and the opportunity of the proposed topic.

Materials and methods

The proposed site for the topics of the Master in Architecture (Iacobus), is a large area along the course of the Barbaña River. It contains the facilities of the former county jail and a small spa in disuse, the Baths of Outeiro, among some other buildings. This area was included in a previous level of analysis on a larger scale that implied, somehow, the whole structure of the city of Ourense. In the same way, we launched a territorial research, based on the topic of hydrotherapy, linking the regeneration of the landscape to the real opportunity of its healthy use. The architectural heritage elements to preserve were the jail main building and part of the Baths. The natural access from the city, from the Rúa do Progreso, occurs at a difference in height of more than 15 meters over the river. The whole trail along the Barbaña, that finally collects all the redundant thermal water from the Burgas springs, should be accessible through new pedestrian pathways and bridges on the river’s edge, currently marginalized by the urban fabric. This wide area of urban, green and public spaces, mistreated by a messy surrounding of buildings – some of them of a relative heritage value – has to be redefined in order to host new spaces and facilities for thermal uses, in continuity with those already existing around the main Burgas natural springs.

Students dedicate a complete academic course to the analysis and the elaboration of their proposals, working in groups with a methodology of workshops, under the direction and supervision of their professors. All of them are encouraged to maintain a strong collaborative spirit, by exchanging information and experiences, especially during the meetings held at Ourense and A Coruña in March 2016. This disciplinary approach to a complex project - the regeneration of a degraded urban landscape – that needs to explore the possibilities linked to its thermal origin, is undertaken through the search of key questions and common features in the academic proposals, from which we can extract very useful conclusions for the reconversion of this suburb into a healthy landscape. The main value of this experience, as a proactive exercise, lies in the common agreements and conclusions, and not necessarily in any of the particular solutions. Understanding the place as a peculiar fragment of the urban landscape induces to approach it from unconventional strategies such as collage, and some others that relate to art1.

Results and discussion

In this phase of the activity, which links to the Iacobus convention and the Master’s programs in Architecture, 29 proposals were done for the Barbaña river area (10 ENSACF + 8 ETSAC + 11 OTHReg). An international jury analyzed and evaluated the projects during a meeting in Clermont-Ferrand on May 27, 2016, highlighting four of them during an intense session of presentation and debate. From this presentation, students will continue to develop their proposals, already within the strictly academic scope, to present them as their Final Master’s Projects.

The results of all this work are very valuable, and rely much more on the process than on the results. The projects of the students, seen individually, have a relative interest although, undoubtedly, for them they constitute their main academic aim. But it is in the entire process of information handling, approach to the place, dialogue with communities, experts and administrations, discussion and exchange in the areas where they will generate and consolidate the action guidelines, where those common conclusions that lead to the different solutions will appear.

Time, as a main variant of a landscape project, and other aspects connected with it like the old agricultural traces still present in the landscape, the conditions of the water –thermal processes of thousands of years and his incident in the uses of the zone - and the topography - anthropic and natural soil erosion-. Based in those aspects and introducing new programs and uses, the river offers an exceptional opportunity for activation and design to recover the continuity of its riverside, acting as the main green infrastructure linked with the city center.

For Ourense, and for the citizens as well, all this selfless and proactive activity is highly valued, as it encourages participation and debate outside the rigid town planning procedures.

The discussion moves from private interests to common ones, from urban concepts such as zoning and building use to regenerative ideas about landscape and health, from cartography to photomontage. For the authorities, the opportunity to have a deep, well-grounded reflection on the possibilities of the urban is unbeatable, especially when it comes from instances like the University, which does not expect to get more benefit from it than the results of the research.

Much of the work done until May 2016 has been included in the publication “Augas Quentes. Argumentos para lo urbano2“, in which an interdisciplinary research work complements the analysis of the work of the students. There were also presentations, round tables and an exhibition that included 19 of the proposals and their corresponding models, celebrated in an old mill rehabilitated as a cultural center (“La Molinera”), close to the work area.

Conclusions

The application of educational initiatives and methodologies to this type of environment in the field of architecture, urbanism and landscape can be extremely effective given that, on the one hand, students deal with complex situations and real assumptions, working in a dimension that far exceeds the strictly academic exercise. On the other hand, it approaches the level of discussion and debate to the citizens and those responsible for urban management, away from political and economic commitments, and from the regulatory and procedural rigidities of urban planning, showing new ways to tackle the problems of our inhabited environment.

The projects that students developed reveal all these common findings, further than the recovery of the landscape and the proposal of new thermal facilities. The most remarkable ones are:

- The regeneration of the greenery using native plant species of shore.

- The layout of new paths and trails to encourage healthy uses.

- The rehabilitation of the architectural heritage and the southern façade of the city towards the river, by attenuating the massive presence of buildings.

- The continuity of both the thermal argument and the river walk.

- The prevalence of free spaces over the built ones.

Acknowledgments

Prof. Felipe Peña, prof. Yvon Cottier, prof. Anne Beer, prof. Claude Gaillard, prof. Nickolaus Dobler and all the participating students and teaching teams at the ETSAC, ENSACF and OTHReg. Prof. Rafael Baltar (in memoriam). Jesús Vázquez, mayor of Ourense, Elvira Carregado, José Mª Eguileta and all the team at the City Council. Sandra González, coordinator.

1 Crespo González, C. (2017). Ourense. La ciudad como collage. In Cahiers Iacobus 2, Augas Quentes. Argumentos para lo urbano (pp. 16-23). A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña.

2 The title of the book means “Hot Waters and urban arguments”. “Augas Quentes” (Hot waters) is in Galician language in the original.

Session VII - References

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c. (2004), “Manifeste du Tiers paysage”, Paris, Sujet Objet

Michel Corajoud (2004)

(2004), “Hors champ” In Faces n° 55 pp. 14-17

b. (2010), “Le projet de paysage : lettre aux étudiants”, In “Le jardinier, l’artiste et l’ingénieur”, Paris, Les Editions de l’Imprimeur.

André CORBOZ (2001), “Le territoire comme palimpseste et autres essais”, Paris, Les Editions de l’Imprimeur.

Conseil de l’Europe (2010), “Convention Européenne du Paysage (CEP) – European Landscape Convention (ELC), Florence - https://www.coe.int/fr/web/landscape

Filip De BOECK & Marie-Françoise PLISSART (2007), “Kinshasa, Récits de la ville invisible”, In “Les Cahiers d’Outre-Mer ” n°237 janv.- mars, Presses universitaires de Bordeaux - URL : http://com.revues.org/1143

Odile De BRUYN (2010), “Les jardins du Congo belge entre idéologie et aménagement du territoire”, In “La recherche en histoire de l’environnement : Belgique-Luxembourg-Congo-Rwanda-Burundi » dir. I. Parmentier – Presses Universitaires de Namur

Giuseppe DEMATTEIS (1995) “Progetto Implicito. Il contributo della geografia umana alle scienze del territorio”, Milano Ed. Franco Angeli

Alice FOXLEY (2010), “Distance and Engagement. Walking, Thinking and Making Landscape. Vogt Landscape Architects” – Baden (CH) Lars Müller Publishers

Tim INGOLD (2013), “Making. Anthropology, Archeology, Art and Architecture”, London and New York, Routledge

Francis LELONZUZI

(2008), “Kinshasa – Ville & Environnement”, Paris Ed. L’Harmattan

(2017), “Les bidonvilles de Kinshasa”, Paris Ed. L’Harmattan

Elizabeth K. MEYER (2007) “Uncertain Parks: Disturbed Sites, Citizens and Risk Society” In “Large Parks”, by Julie Czerniak and Hargraves, pp.59-85 New York: Princeton Architectural Press.

Rita OCCHIUTO (2004), “Le Paradigme de l’Ecart dans l’Espace critique du Projet de Paysage”, Phd Aménagement du Territoire, Faculté Sciences Appliquées Uliege BE

Paul Virilio (2000) “Il tempo mondiale” In Domus n° 800, p.4.

Crespo et al. (2017). Augas Quentes. Argumentos para lo urbano (Cahiers Iacobus 2), A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña ed.

Franco, J.M., C. Rodríguez Cao. (2012) Aqva Divi Vrbs. Auga, Deuses e Cidade. Escavacións arqueolóxicas nas Burgas (Ourense). Ourense: Concello de Ourense ed..

SESSION VIII
Green/blue infrastructures and ecosystem services

Attractive, climate-adapted and sustainable? Public perception of non-native planting in the designed urban landscape.

Helen Hoyle1, James Hitchmough2, Anna Jorgensen2

1Centre for Sustainable Planning and Environments, University of the West of England, Bristol, BS16 1QY, UK; 2Department of Landscape, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, S10 2TN, UK.
e-mail: Helen.Hoyle@uwe.ac.uk

Keywords: climate change; urban green infrastructure; cultural relevance; non-native species; public perception

Abstract

Throughout Europe climate change has rendered many plant species used in contemporary urban planting design less fit for use in public greenspaces. A growing evidence base exists for the ecological value of introducing non-native species, yet urban policy and practice guidance continues to portray non-native species negatively, focusing on their assumed invasiveness. In this context there is a lack of research focusing on the cultural relevance of non-native species in the urban landscape. To address this gap we surveyed 1411 members of the UK public who walked through designed and semi-natural planting of three levels of visual nativeness: “strongly native”; “intermediate” and “strongly non-native”, whilst completing a site-based questionnaire. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were then carried out with 34 questionnaire participants. A majority (57.6%) of our respondents would be happy to see more non-native planting in UK public spaces, rising to 75.3% if it were better adapted to a changing climate than existing vegetation. Respondents recognised the three broad levels of nativeness, yet this was not a factor driving perceptions of the attractiveness of the planting. In addition to climate change, we identified four key factors driving acceptance and rejection of non-native planting: aesthetics; locational context; historic factors and inevitability; and perceptions of invasiveness and incompatability with native wildlife. Our research indicates that in the context of a changing climate, focus should be placed on the potentially positive role of non-invasive, climate-adapted, aesthetically pleasing species within urban planting schemes as these could be well-received by the public.

1.Introduction

In much of contemporary urban policy non-native plant species are presented as being of little value or even harmful. This perspective feeds an overriding presumption within many planners and landscape professionals that the sustainable urban green infrastructure of the twenty first century should consist exclusively of native planting (Davis et al. 2011; Hitchmough, 2011). Policy guidance such as BREEAM UK New Construction non-domestic buildings technical manual (2014) reinforces this stance, advocating the exclusive use of native plant species to ‘minimise impact on existing site ecology’. The main argument used in defence of this position is the assumed invasiveness of all non-native exotic plant species yet many of the claims which drive this perception of the aggressive invasive alien are not backed by data (Davis et al., 2011). Within our own time climate change has already had a profound impact on the distribution of plant and animal species throughout the world, with species migrating as temperatures rise (Hickling, Roy, Hill, Fox & Thomas, 2006; Parmesan, 2006). Climate change will render some native species (such as Betula pendula in Southern England) increasingly poorly fitted. There is a need to incorporate new (non-native) species within designed urban landscapes with potential utility in terms of ‘fitness’ to this warming climate. This raises questions of what is culturally acceptable (Hitchmough, 2011.) To date however there appear to be few studies that have examined how important notions of nativeness in landscape planting are to European citizens. An issue central to this is the capacity of lay people to distinguish between native and non-native plants in practice in the landscape. Alien plants have been important in European culture for so long, that public understanding of what is native and non-native have often become very confused (Davis et al., 2011).

The study discussed here focused on public reaction to actual woodland, shrub and herbaceous planting in designed urban landscapes composed of native and non-native plant species. (Hoyle, Hitchmough & Jorgensen, 2017). Participants walked through areas of planting characterised by one of three species characters: strongly non-native, intermediate or strongly native. We asked: 1) How accepting are people of non-native planting in the designed urban landscape? 2) Can people distinguish between native and non-native planting in these settings? 3) What are the key factors that drive acceptance and rejection of native and non-native planting in these settings? 4) Do these perceptions change when seen against a background of climate change?

Figure 1: The Mediterranean Bank, Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens

2.Materials and Methods

Specific case study sites (e.g. Fig. 1) were selected to representing the three species characters above. Site users (n=1411) were guided to walk through planting at 31 sites throughout England whilst participating in a questionnaire survey. Statements referring to participants’ aesthetic reactions to the planting and the degree to which they found it restorative to walk through were used to identify the factors driving the acceptance and rejection of non-native species. Perception of familiarity with the planting was assessed to gauge whether people did in fact find planting in the category ‘strongly native’ the most familiar. The questionnaire also captured participants’ beliefs about non-native species and climate change. A section focusing on the respondents’ demographic characteristics was included. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were then carried out with 34 of these original questionnaire participants.

3.Results and discussion

3.1 How accepting are people of non-native planting in the designed urban landscape?

Most of our questionnaire participants agreed that they would accept more non-native plant species in UK parks and gardens. This shows that in contrast to the strong nativism paradigm which persists in current policy and practice guidance on biodiversity management, most people in our study see a role for non-native species in public places.

3.2. Can people distinguish between native and non-native species in these settings?

We chose sites to represent three broad levels of ‘visual nativeness’. Our participants recognised these three levels. Participants in a Swedish study (Qiu et al., 2013) engaged with planting at a similarly broad scale, and also recognised differences in overall biodiversity between 4 visually distinctive habitat types. Earlier studies (Fuller et al. 2007; Dallimer et al. 2012) involved participants’ estimating specific numbers of different species of birds, butterflies and plants at a study location and generated conflicting evidence about people’s ability to assess biodiversity accurately. It may be that the public can perceive a general resolution of biodiversity or ‘nativeness’ but is less-equipped to identify ‘nativeness’ at a species-specific level.

3.3. What are the key factors that drive acceptance and rejection of native and non-native species in these settings?

Four key factors emerged as drivers of our participants’ reactions: i) aesthetics; ii) locational context in relation to existing planting and habitats; iii) historical factors and inevitability; and iv) perceptions of invasiveness and incompatibility with native wildlife. Although our participants recognised broad categories of ‘nativeness’, this was not a factor driving their perceptions of the attractiveness of the planting. The strongly non-native herbaceous planting that generated most comment in the interviews was the Mediterranean Bank (Fig. 1). Several interviewees expressed the opinion that this was attractive, and appropriate for planting in UK public parks.

3.4. Do these perceptions change when seen against a background of climate change?

Questionnaire evidence indicated an increase in acceptance of non-native species in UK parks and gardens when participants were asked if they would accept these species if they were better suited to the climate than present day species. This indicates that most of our large sample of over 1400 members of the public was already aware of at least some of the ecological implications of climate change (Hickling, et al., 2006; Parmesan, 2006) and were able to understand the implications for plant species growing in urban public spaces. This is convincing evidence that climate change is a major driver of acceptance of non-native plant species amongst the public.

4.Conclusions

Our work suggests that there is a schism between sustainable urban policy that sees a future involving only native plant species and what members of the public believe and value. Far from expressing hostility to non-native species, in a UK context most people appear to welcome the use of non-invasive non-native planting in urban public spaces, whilst at the same time having some understanding of the risks as well as the benefits. If key long term goals of sustainable urban planting are to increase human well-being and to maximise support value for native animal biodiversity, at a time of climate change, this will not be best achieved by policy which appears to be at odds with the beliefs and values of the average urban citizen. There is a need to reflect these values more conspicuously in more nuanced urban landscape policy and practice.

Acknowledgements

This research was funded by a PhD scholarship from the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Sheffield.

Economic development and biodiversity in new ecosystems

Ceregato Alessandro1, Pirazzoli Riccardo2

1Istituto di Scienze Marine, ISMAR-CNR, Venice, 30122, Italy;
2University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy
e-mail: alessandro.ceregato@ve.ismar.cnr.it ; riccardo.pirazzoli4@unibo.it

Abstract

Landscapes are deeply transformed by economic development which is forcing people to move into cities. Europe is densely populated, and its urban areas are devouring more and more lands. This population density is the main driver of landscape fragmentation. This process can be better detected at regional level: in Emilia Romagna, residential settlements and economic infrastructures trigger the loss and fragmentation of land. Rural and urban spaces are melted together in hybrid ruresidential territories. These areas often share a common set of problems such as: poor air quality, high levels of noise, greenhouse gas emissions, water scarcity, and waste.

How we manage these ruresidential territories is one of the main drivers for environmental change, with huge impacts on ecosystems and our quality of life.

In this paper we suggest to explore these hybrid areas through the lens of biodiversity. According to this perspective, if economic activities are sustainable, the aesthetic quality of the landscape is altered, but the biodiversity rate could be improved. Even if Emilia-Romagna is a highly anthropic area, featured by fragmented landscapes, it still has a high biodiversity rate because living organisms can colonize human settlements (for example, wrecks, off-shore oil-plants; wildlife crossing structures on landscape connectivity, artificial lakes), which can be exploited by many species as a new habitat. Even though they cannot replace the complexity and the environmental tasks of natural ecosystems, these new habitats can trigger positive effects on economic development, land use, flora and fauna, emissions, water quality, local climate, landscape scenery.

Keywords: ecosystems, landscape, economic development, biodiversity

1. Introduction

Economic development is deeply transforming European landscapes, from natural into “cultural landscapes permeated by technology” (EEA-FOEN, 2011, p.15). As a result of this process, Europe is densely populated, and its metropolitan areas are devouring more and more lands. It can be argued that conflicting land-use demands arise because all these different issues require decisions that need difficult trade-offs (EEA-FOEN, 2011). Therefore, landscape fragmentation also triggers fragmented policies. We must manage this scenario, where the visual perception of landscapes is modified by roads, railways, power lines, ski lifts, pressure lines and built-up areas. These fragmenting elements have an influence on the quality of landscapes. Natural landscapes are shaped by several decisions and transformed into technically dominated cultural landscapes and subdivide landscapes into fragments (EEA-FOEN, 2011). What can we do with these fragments? How can we live well “within the planet’s ecological limits” (cfr. European Commission, 2016)?

Biodiversity and health are strongly affected by highly fragmented landscapes (Moser et al., 2007; Jaeger, 2002) which also have “a lower quality and they lose parts of their function as recreational areas” (EEA-FOEN, 2011, p. 53). Economic development puts pressure on biodiversity, degrades habitats and is involved in several issues “ranging from carbon dioxide emissions to soil sealing, landscape fragmentation and urban heat island effects” (EEA, 2008, p.5). Many scholars (cfr. DeVelice and Martin 2001; Turner 2006) demonstrated the important role of “roadless areas for biodiversity conservation and for preserving landscape quality” (EEA-FOEN, 2011, p. 57; van der Ree et al., 2011). The main hypothesis to be discussed here is intended to argue that assumption because economic activities cannot be eradicated by European areas. Nevertheless, economic development could be sustainable and, therefore, it will keep on altering the aesthetic “quality of the landscape” (EEAA, 2011, p.53), but the biodiversity rates could be improved. By the way, many research papers (cfr. Obeng and Aguilar, 2015; Clements, 2013; Ferraro and Pattanayak, 2006; Garber-Yonts, et al., 2004) just focus on static exams of the ecosystems, excluding any adaptive skill performed by these systems. This research will try to demonstrate this hypothesis (economic development can arouse a florid biodiversity in adaptive ecosystems) by studying the highly anthropic area of Emilia-Romagna, where residential settlements and economic infrastructures trigger the loss and fragmentation of land, but they are also exploited by many species as a new habitat (cfr. Clément, 2005). These new hybrid environments (cfr. Jaeger, 2002) should be better explored because they cannot replace the complexity and the environmental tasks of natural ecosystems, but they can trigger positive effects on economic development, land use, flora and fauna, emissions, water quality, local climate, landscape scenery (cfr. Clément, 2005).

This paper, therefore, will focus on how to manage these ruresidential fragments and not on how to eliminate them.

2. Methodology

This paper qualitatively investigates the impact of landscape fragmentation on biodiversity in Emilia Romagna (ER) region. This Northern Italian region faces a high economic development which triggered fragmentation geometries due to industrial areas, transport infrastructures, residential sprawling spaces. As a result of this, a grid of 1000 m2 cells (cfr. EEAA, 2011) can be easily observed: they can be defined as units of New Ecosystem cells, NEC. We analyzed 6 NECs:

1. urban artificial lake

2. Rotting Trees

3. Railway flora

4. Off-shore platforms

5. Water diversions

6. Abandoned pastures

3. Results and discussion

Many research papers just focus on the negative effects of highly fragmented ruresidential landscape on biodiversity (Obeng and Aguilar, 2015; Clements, 2013; Ferraro and Pattanayak, 2006; Garber-Yonts, et al., 2004). After that this process is triggered by economic development, restoration of former natural habitat is compromised (Pascual et al., 2016) because:

1. colonization sequence is damaged;

2. biodiversity islands are created;

3. initial biodiversity rate is forever lost.

This process triggers several cases of clear pauperisation and contamination of the natural habitat, but also raises biodiversity rates in these ruresidential, fragmented landscapes. We discuss the biodiversity rates detected in 6 NECs in order to demonstrate that there are unexpected positive effects. We advocate that new eco-systems are allowing a raise in biodiversity rates.

4. Conclusions: ecosystems are plastic

The fragmentation of the landscape is due to economic development, but it may also have positive effect on biodiversity. In fact, it has created a hybrid, ruresidential environment.

It can be easily accepted that there are several phenomena of biodiversity impoverishment, but at the same time new ecosystems have been created, where biodiversity has increased. This has a positive implication also for economic development as these NECs allow tourist use, but also positive social-cultural effects (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005; Birkhofer et al., 2018; Assandri et al., 2018).

Ecosystems should be therefore studied as plastic and highly adaptive systems. In literature, many academic papers deals just with the negative effects of economic development, but we found out that biodiversity rates are improving in unexpected areas, where anthropization strongly affected the habitats.

Measuring landscape fragmentation in the European context: a comparative approach

Andrea De Montis1, Vittorio Serra2, Antonio Ledda1

1Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Sassari, Sassari, 07100, Italy;
2Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Architecture, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, 09123, Italy
e-mail: andreadm@uniss.it

Abstract

Landscape fragmentation (LF) consists of the progressive subdivision of original habitat areas in smaller and more isolated patches and is associated to ecosystem discontinuity and diminishing biodiversity. Transport and mobility infrastructures (TMIs) are major drivers of LF and trigger negative effects, such as loss of habitat, increased mortality of vegetal species, and death of wild animals killed by vehicular traffic. A rich literature focuses on the assessment of LF and proposes several measures. In this paper, we aim at assessing LF in Italy and Wales at the sub regional level. We use the Barrier Fragmentation Index (BFI), the Urban Fragmentation Index (UFI), and the effective mesh size (meff) and assess the interplay between these metrics.

Keywords: landscape fragmentation; metrics; barrier effect; green areas

Introduction

LF can be defined as a dynamic process, where larger landscape fragments, or patches, tend to become smaller and more insulated than in their original condition (EEA, 2011). This process can be caused by linear and mobility infrastructures such as railways and roads and by urbanised surfaces, which can reduce the range of movement of animal species and reduce the connectivity of the landscape (Bissonette & Adair, 2008). It is possible to quantify the LF through different indices, such as the Infrastructural Fragmentation Index (BFI), which measures the LF caused by linear infrastructures and the barrier effect they represent for the target species Erinaceus europaeus, the UFI, which quantifies the LF caused by urbanized areas, and the effective mesh-size index, which demonstrates how much the fragmentation value is proportional to the probability that two randomly selected points in an area are connected to each other, i.e. they are not separated by barriers (roads, railways, towns, etc.) (Jaeger, 2000). This essay is organized as follows. In the next section, the selected methods are presented and in the context of recent advances in scientific literature. In the same section we illustrate the case study of Sardinia and Wales. In the third section, we present and discuss the results obtained while in the fourth and last section we show the conclusion of the work.

Material and methods

Scientific literature is rich in indices able to measure LF. In this work we use three indices, which are operationalized as follows. The BFI index is obtained according to the following relation:

where Li stands for the length of TMIs traits without discontinuities (bridges, viaducts, and tunnels), N for the number of fragments, P and A for -respectively- the perimeter and the area of the reference area, and F(B)i for a parameter describing the barrier effect (De Montis, Ledda, Serra, Peddio, 2017). This parameter varies according to how an animal species perceives a road infrastructure B (Scolozzi & Geneletti, 2012). Table 1 reports on the values of the barrier effect parameter assessed for the perception of different kind of roads by the European Hedgehog.

Table 1 Values of F(B) according the type of TMIs. Source: Scolozzi and Geneletti (2012).

(B) Type of infrastructure | F(B)
Fast-moving (two-lane) national roads and railways | 0,95
Asphalted secondary (one or two-lane) roads with moderate traffic | 0,50
Rural and forest paved roads | 0,05

According to Romano and Zullo (2013) and Battisti and Romano (2007), the UFI can be modeled by the following equation:

where Aurb stands for the extension in squared meters of the urban area, pi for the perimeter in meters of the urban area, and At for the extension in squared meters of the LU area.

The meff can be modeled by the following equation:

where n indicates the number of parcels, Ai indicates the patches area and At indicates the total area of the landscape examined. The lower the effective mesh size, the more fragmented the landscape is (EEA, 2011).

We apply these metrics for assessing LF in four Landscape Units (LUs) of approximately the same extent (about 1,000 km2) in Sardinia (Italy), namely Regione delle Giare Basaltiche and Limbara, and Wales (the UK), North-East and South-East (Figure 1).

Figure 1 On the left: Sardinia and Wales in the European context. On the right: LUs in the regional contexts: Regione delle Giare basaltiche (IS1), Limbara (IS2), North-East (UKW1), and South-East (UKW2). Source: our elaboration of data provided by Global Administrative Areas and Regions Sardinia and Wales.

We use the data freely available online on the website of the Region of Sardinia, while for Wales the data have been found from the websites Digimap and https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/.

Results and discussion

In Table 2, we report on the results of our assessment.

Table 2. The assessment of LF according to the three indices BFI, UFI and meff.

LUs | BFI | UFI | meff (km2)
State, region | Code | Name |  |  |
Italy, Sardinia | IS1 | Regione delle Giare basaltiche | 13568.89 | 0.43 | 412.45
| IS2 | Limbara | 1441.57 | 0.24 | 892.78
UK, Wales | UKW1 | North East Wales | 299733.70 | 3.40 | 9.61
| UKW2 | South East Wales | 296164.12 | 7.06 | 10.38

The most fragmented LUs are in Wales, according to all the measures adopted, as for Welsh LUs BFI and UFI reach the highest figures and meff the lowest. Limbara shows the lowest values of both BFI and UFI, and the highest meff, because that LU is characterized by a mountainous and sparsely inhabited territory.

Table 3. Analysis of correlation through Pearson Test.

| BFI | meff
meff | -0.8975 |
UFI | 0.8800 | -0.7923

The analysis of the Pearson correlation coefficient reported in Table 3 indicates that BFI and UFI are strongly and positively correlated, while they are both strongly and negatively correlated with meff.

Conclusion

In this work, we have developed a comparative approach to the assessment of LF in two regions of Italy and the UK. We have applied three indicators, BFI, UFI and meff, and verified that the highest values are found in the coastal and most populated areas. We have checked how the animal species, typically the European hedgehog, perceive the roads as barriers with a different degree. We have also verified the correlation among the LF indices, which are found to be very well correlated in both the senses.

Multilevel Green Governance in Lyon

Anna Laura Palazzo1, Maria Beatrice Andreucci2

1Roma Tre University of Rome, Rome, 00184, Italy;
2Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, 00196, Italy.
e-mail: annalaura.palazzo@uniroma3.it; mbeatrice.andreucci@uniroma1.it

Abstract

With some 1.3 million inhabitants and 59 Municipalities, the Greater Lyon established in 2015 as Lyon Métropole displays a challenging partnership project on agricultural and natural areas deeply rooted in its planning history since the late Eighties. Agricultural uses, forest management, landscape protection are at stake, depending on intrinsic characters, the pressure level exerted by urban sprawl, the existence of a local demand regarding their management and values - environmental protection, sustainable agriculture, loisir de proximité – supporting public spending.

Since 2015, Lyon Métropole is in charge of environmental protection, sustainable agriculture and outdoor recreational facilities. Accordingly, the targeted scenario of the Territorial Development Consistency Plan (Schéma de Cohérence territorial, SCoT) is likely to accommodate along with the already protected natural reserve areas newly established agriculture and forestry perimeters (PAENs), whose selection criteria are to be consistent with the overall strategy and local challenges as well.

This contribution is about the implementation of so-called Trames vertes et bleues, i.e. Green Blue Infrastructure, that owes much to the corpus of the natural sciences in encompassing ecological principles within regional and urban planning. The overall idea also levers on the tradition of urban design in order to figure out settlement patterns able to decline sustainability even as a “Good City Form”, notably by means of so-called liaisons vertes, a minor network of pedestrian connections entering the city core shaping the built environment.

Keywords: Lyon Métropole; urban-rural relationships; green blue infrastructure; urban regeneration; multi-level governance.

Introduction

The French case is featured by long-standing awareness of peri-urban space and rurbanization phenomena at different scales (Bauer, Roux, 1976).

An array of surveys, legislative tools and experiences, argue that the conventional view of rural areas set apart from the destiny of cities is no longer reflective of the reality of either rural or peri-urban regions. Therefore, the potential benefits of urban-rural linkages rest both in strengthening their relationships and in mitigating their negative impacts.

In the last decade, the Green and Blue Infrastructure (GI) approach has been framed at national level and drafted at the regional one (Schémas Régionaux de Cohérence Ecologique), in the Agenda 21 processes, within strategic planning and specific action plans ruled by the municipalities.

According to the Grenelle de l’Environnement procedure, launched in 2007, the construction of corridors and green networks - biodiversity reservoirs; earth and wet ecological corridors; waterways; transition zones – requires coupling sectoral planning with general planning tools (Code de l’Urbanisme, art. L. 110 addressing the biodiversity conservation, by means of protection and restoration measures, and the establishment of ecological continuity).

The Décret n° 2012-290 du 29 février 2012 specifies that GI has to be “taken into account” within local planning: this is the very scale that makes it possible to address both functional aspects (performance) and design criteria and rules concerning the setting of the open space (conformance), aligning environmental policies and urban design tools.

Materials and methods

Since 1992, the Greater Lyon has been leading an overall strategy within its strategic plan (socalled Schéma d’aménagement de Luyon, SDAL). Half its jurisdiction would be secured as open space, focusing on different features and services to be provided to residents and city users: natural reserve areas (protected by the Loi n. 76-1285 du 31 décembre 1976), agricultural areas and sites of landscape interest to be subject to environmental impact assessment.

Our study relies on a vast bibliography and desk reviews, notably the reports published by Lyon

Métropole and the Département du Rhône, surveys carried out by the Agence d’Urbanisme de Lyon, the institution in charge of strategic planning, and scientific literature produced within the academic sphere. Some clarifications refer to interviews conducted over the past decade.

Results and discussion

In the early Nineties, the Greater Lyon launched so-called Projets Nature, involving several municipalities. The major stake was then to provide a long-term reference for the management of several open spaces (maîtrise d’ouvrage), from the most immediate issues, such as the arrangement of paths and rest areas, to some more demanding activities related to natural environment recovery, in connection with educational programs.

Meanwhile, the Loi relative au Développement des territoires ruraux (2005) would entrust the Departments to secure a number of espaces agricoles et naturels périurbains (PAENs), differing in characters and roles, discussed in public hearings with local stakeholders and citizens (Département du Rhône, 2009). Decision-making involved local communities, the Chamber of Agriculture, farmers and trade associations, and led to different governance processes within structurally and functionally homogeneous districts, managed by councils of local stakeholders (Fig. 1).

Peculiar attention was then paid to most vulnerable peri-urban areas still devoted to agriculture taking into account different crop systems and cultivation patterns: the poly-culture widespread in the west of the agglomeration or the arboriculture in the south-western areas, face to intensive crops in the eastern part of the agglomeration, in the Plateau de Feyzin and in the Franc Lyonnais.

The number and location of PAENs, that in 2014 totaled 12,653 hectares, can vary over time according to changing needs. In fact, agricultural preservation is the matter of contracts specifying accessibility to public at large in exchange for financial support, or the reasons for compulsory purchase, so that the layout of GI, already defined within the strategic upper level of the SCoT, be secured for a certain lapse of time within local plans (PLU) and specific regulations (Palazzo, 2016).

Complementarity or rather solidarity between the city and the countryside is triggered by further challenges. On the one side, multi-functionality in agriculture allows farmers and landowners to directly provide a large set of fresh produce along with leisure facilities and overall green welfare while preventing abandonment and hydrogeological risks. On the other side, reciprocal flows need slow mobility networks - liaisons vertes - , connecting open spaces to each other and even places of daily accessibility within the urban districts from the open fields following precise requirements, such as tree alignments at least on one side of the pathways (Figs. 2, 3).

The progressive, non-definitive nature of the sketches allows for an incremental procedure witnessing public commitment to certainty over strategy and to flexibility over detail.

Fig. 1. Agence d’Urbanisme pour le développement de l’Agglomération Lyonnaise, Selected scenario for the “Sites à enjeu PENAP” (2010), and Les Liaisons vertes.

Fig. 2. Agence d’Urbanisme de l’aire métropolitaine lyonnaise, Performance and conformance of the Green Infrastructure. a. Franc Lyonnais, Guidelines for the open space (2009); b. Liaisons vertes. Les nouvelles voies de la Ville Nature (2009).

Fig. 3. Atelier Marguerit. Mission d’études, d’expertise et de conseil pour la définition et la mise en œuvre du projet urbain et durable de Gerland. Liaisons vertes within the City. The City Center and the Gerland District in the “Projet urbain”.

The strategic approach to urban regeneration, which makes use of the liaisons vertes, is called upon to combine certainty in timing and procedures with flexibility of its “road map”. What the French call projet de territoire is consistent with the idea of the city as a collective actor more than as a collective work, implying different governance tools in which rules stem from agreements between the local authorities and public at large.

Conclusions

GI acts as a powerful factor of attractiveness and urban resilience, and is to be enhanced by leveraging the economic potential of agriculture and ensuring a better connection to the builtup areas (Autran, 2004; EU Commission, 2013; Blanc et Clergeau, 2014; Andreucci, 2017).

Such city-nature-agriculture complementarity appeals to an integrated development strategy in the whole agglomeration and beyond encompassing ecological, economic and social issues. In fact, the resurgent demand for proximity landscape is prompted by the success of short food supply chains and direct sales.

The metropolitan context proves relevant also in socio-educational terms (land management and maintenance, leisure facilities, etc.), while encouraging peri-urban agriculture and food production proves crucial for the development of multi-functional facilities to individuals.

A further step towards viability of such policy is provided by the Projet Agro-Environnemental et Climatique de l’Agglomération Lyonnaise 2016-2022, that embraces the climate change emergency by addressing agro-environmental issues related to biodiversity.

Acknowledgements

Paul Boino (Université de Lyon, Directeur de l’Institut d’Urbanisme) ; Didier Budin (Grand Lyon, Directeur de la Mission Gerland); Sébastien Donguy (architecte, chef de projet de la ZAC Bon Lait) ; Anne-Cécile Pidal (Grand Lyon, Délégation Générale au Développement économique et international); Alain Ratinaud (Université de Lyon, Directeur de Projet Service Développement et Aménagement des Campus).

Tourism cycling routes within the national plan for sustainable mobility: an opportunity to improve and develop ‘fair and inclusive well-being’

Maria Rita Schirru1

1Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, 00185, Italy
e-mail: mritaschirru@gmail.com

Keywords: national cycling routes, health promotion, landscape project

Abstract 

The project for national cycling routes, as foreseen in both the 2016 Stability Law and the 2017 Budget Law, represents an important opportunity to promote so-called fair and inclusive well-being, in line with what has previously been stated in the BES report (Benessere Equo e Solidale). This is a joint CNEL (National Council for Work and the Economy) and ISTAT (National Statistics Institute) initiative which aims to assess society’s progress not just from an economic point of view (as seen by GDP) but by also considering the fundamental, social and environmental features of well-being, accompanied by measures of inequality and sustainability (ISTAT 2017). It is fundamentally a ‘cognitive tool’ that gives local administrations and communities a structured overview of fair and inclusive well-being in their respective areas.

Within this framework, the GRAB cycling route in Rome (a ‘ring-road’ for bicycles) is especially significant: a ‘landscape project’ that stems from a strong, grassroots demand for health and wellbeing and the result of collective work coordinated by the VeloLove association (defined as a network of parties and shows mainly for urban cyclists), which involved individuals, committees, associations and institutions, most notably Legambiente and Touring Club Italia. The GRAB project consists of a cycle and pedestrian ‘ring’ extending over 45 kilometres throughout Rome; a ‘light’ infrastructure that would lead to high environmental, social and economic profitability (GRAB 2017).

The aim of this paper is, therefore, to take stock of the current state of implementation of this project for national tourism cycling routes, with particular reference to GRAB in Rome, and to understand its ability to meet people’s growing needs in terms of well-being and health. This will be done also through a comparison with other European countries, like Denmark, which are more advanced in terms of policies that not only encourage cycling and pedestrian mobility but also extend the idea of ‘fair and inclusive well-being’ (City of Copenhagen, Building and Construction Administration, Roads and Parks Department 2002, Global Partners’ Innovation Exchange Website 2013, City of Copenhagen, The Technical and Environmental Administration, Traffic Department 2011).

Introduction 

This contribution will attempt to analyse the state of implementation of the national tourism cycle paths project (fig. 1), with particular reference to GRAB in Rome, and to understand its ability to respond to the developing needs of the population regarding well-being and health - in line with what has previously been stated in the BES report, developed by ISTAT and CNEL, to assess society’s well-being not only from an economic but also from a social and environmental point of view - through a comparison with other very advanced European countries in terms of policies encouraging cycling and cycling-pedestrian mobility as well as fair and inclusive welfare.

Materials and methods

This contribution will therefore analyse the tools and strategies for cycle and pedestrian mobility in Italy (Law 366/1998; Law 2/2018; Regional Law Lazio 11/2017, etc.) compared specifically with what Denmark has done in this regard.

In our country, since the approval of the Cycling Mobility Law (law no. 2/2018), which replaced Law no. 366/1998 (containing the legal principles behind the development of cycling), guidelines have been drawn up to plan and organise the development of the sector. This law regulates the “general cycling mobility plan, providing that each region must prepare its own plan and define a system of exchange between bikes and other vehicles in specific parking areas.”

Of particular importance is the approval of the recent Lazio Regional Law (no. 11/2017) entitled “Provisions to Encourage New Mobility”, one of the goals of which is the creation of an interconnected, protected and dedicated network of cycle and pedestrian routes through worthwhile locations in terms of the environment, landscape, culture and tourism.

The approval of the “National System of Tourist Cycling Paths”, foreseen in the 2016 Stability Law and the 2017 Budgetary Law, plays its part in this context. It includes ten itineraries, with over 3 thousand kilometres of track, including GRAB (the cycling ring project around Rome) and the VENTO project (i.e. the Turin-Venice path along the Po). In particular, GRAB presents itself as a “landscape project” that stems from high demand for health and well-being from ordinary people and consists of a cycling/pedestrian ring that extends for 45 kilometres in and around the city of Rome (fig. 2).

The national tourism cycling paths were financed, for the 2016-2018 period, to the sum of €91 million, to which resources provided by the regions and local authorities concerned will be added. By the end of 2018, after having completed the design phase for the cycle paths, issued the first tenders and opened the first construction sites, the remaining tenders will be assessed and all the planned works will be completed (Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport 2017).

The comparison with Europe includes the analysis of a particularly significant case study, (i.e. Denmark and its leadership in developing policies for cycling mobility implementation) highlighting the most significant strategies put into place in recent years which have made Copenhagen the most bicycle-friendly city in the world, as follows:

- the 1996 Bicycle Account initiative, where the city first began to measure some issues around cycling through 10 indicators

- the 1997 Municipal Development Plan, where the city embarked on the planning of green cycling routes

- the 2002-2012 Cycle Policy Plan, which gave priority to cycle paths in urban planning

- the 2006-2016 Cycle Track Priority Plan, which established the order in which cycle paths would be built

- the 2007-2012 Action Plan for Safe Traffic which aimed to reduce the number of accidents by 50% compared to 1996

- the 2011 Good, Better, Best - the City of Copenhagen’s Bicycle Strategy for 2011-2025, which aims to make Copenhagen the best cycling city in the world, focusing on four main areas (city life, comfort, speed and safety) (City of Copenhagen, Building and Construction Administration, Roads and Parks Department 2002; Global Partners’ Innovation Exchange Website 2013; City of Copenhagen, The Technical and Environmental Administration, Traffic Department 2011).

- Results and conclusion

The results of the research, which emerge from a comparison between Italy and Denmark, have led to the definition of a series of concluding thoughts and reflections which may be useful in establishing a range of tools and strategies for the effective enhancement and promotion of cycling and pedestrian mobility.

These reflections show in particular that Danish policy is, first and foremost, a highly quantitative one, based on a series of strategies that constantly assess ongoing policies through a series of key indicators: particular reference is made to the biennial Bicycle Account. This tool has proved to be both useful and effective in monitoring and guiding current policies on cycling and could be of great use in Italy and especially in Rome, albeit adapting it to differing local realities and taking into account the implementation of major projects on national cycle routes funded by the Government.

It should not be forgotten that in Italy there is often a substantial delay in implementing structured policies to encourage cycling mobility, due partly to cultural and behavioural reasons. In fact, only recently have innovative legal instruments been introduced, such as the “Cycling Mobility General Plan”, foreseen in the 2018 Law on Cycling Mobility, which requires each region to prepare its own plan and the definition of a system of exchange between bikes and other vehicles in suitable parking areas. In line with this, only recently, with the approval of the Lazio Regional Law entitled “Provisions to Encourage New Mobility”, has the “Regional Cycling Plan” (PRMC) been introduced, with the aim of pursuing the best use of the territory through safe cycling as a means of urban and suburban transport, also in conjunction with collective, public transport.

However, while Italy lacks a wide-ranging, long-term strategy like Denmark’s 2011-2025 Bicycle Strategy in Copenhagen, considerable progress has been made with the project for national cycle routes throughout the country, including Rome’s GRAB cycling route.

A final point particularly concerns the scope of the measures planned for implementation in Rome in the GRAB project, as compared with projects carried out or being carried out in Copenhagen. Rome has significantly wider territorial development in relation to its number of inhabitants and a morphological structure that is completely different from other European capitals. It is a complex and uneven area where various urban phenomena occur, with locations at different altitudes and very often with very large differences in height: these conditions have certainly not helped Rome in the preparation of cycle paths in the area, which are much more expensive and difficult to introduce than in many other European capitals. Further issues arise from the bureaucratic burden (that is far from easy to alleviate) and archaeological finds that often delay or prevent the construction of any public work in the area. One possible solution to the difficulties represented by the potential physical difficulties in covering long distances at different heights could be a bike sharing scheme or promoting the purchase of pedal-assisted cycles (also through the widespread introduction of electric charging stations).

Other issues include cultural and behavioural barriers that have meant that until recently the majority of Italians were not particularly aware of the need to open up to new forms of ‘soft mobility’, an awareness that has now grown alongside mounting environmental concerns and the acceptance that large cities such as Rome (and its inhabitants) can no longer bear current levels of traffic and pollution. In this context, popular movements have joined forces under the coordination of VeloLove to encourage and facilitate innovative forms of mobility in the capital in line with what has already successfully occurred in other European countries.

Fig. 1. The national cycling routes. Source: Ministero delle Infrastrutture e dei trasporti. Online: http://www.mit.gov.it/node/538

Fig. 2. The GRAB project in Rome. Source: VeloLove. Online: http://velolove.it/grab/

Between nature and artifice.
San Rocco Valley in Naples as health landscape

Pasquale Miano1, Adriana Bernieri1, Francesca Coppolino1

1Department of Architecture, University of Naples “Federico II”, Naples, 80134, Italy
e-mail: pasmiano@unina.it;
adbernieri@gmail.com;
francesca.coppolino@unina.it

Abstract

The established relationship between wide open “artificialized” urban spaces with nature and landscape within the contemporary city, constitutes a specific key in understanding the theme “The city of care and care of the city”, which has been addressed in PRIN 2015 (Projects of Relevant National Interest) and which involves the Research Unit of the Department of Architecture at University of Naples “Federico II”. The main aim of the research is to design spaces through which it would be possible to give shape to the need for a healthier life in the city. In this framework, the great open spaces of the hilly city of Naples represent a strategic element of urban renewal between the compact city and the newly formed city, in which experimenting new intervention logics able to combine nature and wellbeing. The areas included in this sequence of spaces preserve, even if in a fragmentary way, the agricultural vocation of the northern area of Naples. It is therefore necessary to reflect on possible intervention logics based on different category of open space, between natural and artificial, which may overcome the consolidated definitions of street, square or park. The general intervention strategy for this area of the city is based on some main themes: the weave of paths; the interconnected open spaces; the nodes of healthiness. In this context, an interesting example is the interstitial area of San Rocco Valley, located near Colli Aminei subway station. The valley is a heterogeneous naturalistic area, in which it is possible to find a mixture of altered naturalness and unfinished artificiality. For this area, starting from the destinations of an urban implementation plan approved some years ago, it has been assumed the conception of a new entrance area to the valley, in which regenerating pre-existing sports activities and imagining possible new ones, by working on the idea of well-being through the architecture itself. Starting from this place, characterized by weak boundaries, the study area gets expanded in various directions, involving fundamental elements of the hill morphology and allowing the formation of public spaces, in an attempt to define new health landscapes for the city of Naples.

Keywords: health; nature; architecture; landscape; well-being

Introduction 

Today’s historical-environmental context has challenged the antagonism between the purity of nature and the artificial contamination of the city. According to David Harvey, “today we live a second nature” (Harvey, 2010), an environment deeply marked by human presence and creative destruction. Thinking of “taking refuge in nature” is therefore no longer a possible thing.

Facing this theme means reasoning on critical issues and, at the same time, on the potentiality of urban spaces, which got profoundly changed in recent decades. More than traditional urban open spaces, such as those of the street, the square or the park, in the city prevail spaces generated by their mixture and contamination, hybrid urban spaces in which experimenting new logics of intervention that can combine nature and well-being.

Starting from a reflection on the role of health and care in the city, in the context of PRIN 2015 (Project of Relevant National Interest) on the theme “The city of care and care of the city” carried out by the Universities of Rome, Venice and Naples, a group composed of architects, landscape architects, urban transport experts, doctors and sociologists tries to relate the transformation of urban spaces with the prevention of chronic diseases of the 21st century. The research moves from the observation according which the concepts of health, care and well-being may profoundly influence the current conformation of the city. This would depend on a dual mechanism: on the one hand, through the direct relationship between therapeutic activities and urban spaces, on the other, the same structure of the city, in its existing and new parts, can improve the care of citizens, fighting in advance the onset of pathologies.

Therefore, it becomes significant to examine the relationship with nature and with urban landscape that the great “artificialized” open spaces establish within the contemporary city. As part of the general theme investigated by the PRIN 2015 group, this relation constitutes a specific interpretation key identified by the Research Unit of the Department of Architecture at the University of Naples “Federico II”, with the aim of defining spaces through which it is possible to shape the need for a healthier life in the city.

Nature and artifice in the public space of the hilly city of Naples

The great open spaces of the hilly city of Naples can be a strategic element of urban renewal between the compact city, along the coast line, and the newly formed city, located in the inner territory; a large territorial and urban configuration in which experiment design logics able to combine the needs of health and well-being (Miano, 2017). The city between Parco di Capodimonte and Parco delle Colline includes dissimilar urban enclaves and a set of spaces between artifice and nature. To the north, Piscinola and Scampia districts are “emblematic centrality” due to the presence of compromised residual spaces. To the south, in Materdei and Sanità districts, on the edge of the historic city, it is possible to find the ramifications of the neighboring parks. These districts represent a sort of “periphery in the centre”. In the central area, the Colli Aminei district, although immersed into the two parks, is separated from them and also from the adjacent hospital area. The morphology of the territory is here characterized by a sequence of natural valleys, impluvium lines and roads that branch off from the hills towards the borders of the historical city. The areas presented in this succession of spaces are marked by quarries, underground paths and by a system of green spaces, preserving, even in a fragmentary way, the agricultural vocation of the northern area of Naples. In this situation it is necessary to reflect on possible intervention logics based on particular articulations that take into consideration different categories of open spaces, between natural and artificial. These are spaces which are not configured as a unity of completed form but rather as a cohesion of mutable and ever-changing fragments.

The general intervention strategy is based on some main themes: the weave of pedestrian and cycle paths; the interconnected open spaces; the nodes of healthiness. The first theme moves from the idea of a park as an urban connection, in the perspective of overcoming the logic of the park as a fence. In the hilly area of Naples, nature and well-being may become fundamental elements for the definition of a complex network of cycle and pedestrian paths, to be implemented in close relation to some urban actions, such as the breakage of school and health structure enclosures or, more in general, the rethinking of the boundary between internal and external space of public buildings. The second theme concerns the definition of a system of heterogeneous open areas that are grafted along the weave of paths, of which they constitute an expansion and which may accommodate different uses and practices. Open space is considered as a quality element of the urban tissue, a space for the prevention of diseases through the promotion of physical and sports activities. The third theme concerns the identification of health nodes, which, within the general strategy, represent specific surveys through which to deepen the “medicalization” of existing buildings and the design of new architectures intended as “therapeutic”. For the project of a healthy city, the most significant change appears to be overcoming the idea of care understood as “cure” (Borasi and Zardini, 2012), which follows the medical idea of health, towards a perspective of care understood as “care”, that means “taking care” of urban elements and environments.

San Rocco Valley as health landscape: project proposals

An interesting “piece” that constitutes one of the nodes of the briefly described general strategy is the interstitial area of the San Rocco Valley, located between the subway line 1 stops Colli Aminei and Frullone. The valley is a heterogeneous naturalistic area in which it is possible to find a mixture of altered naturalness and unfinished artificiality that is very different from the idea of a traditional park, expressed, for example, by the adjacent eighteenth-century Parco di Capodimonte. It is an area rich in landscape and environmental values and historical traces, which results isolated from the urbanized contexts (Recchia, Ruotolo, 2010).

For this area, starting from the use of an implementation urban plan approved a few years ago, it is proposed the realization of an entrance area to the Valley, destined to park, in which to redevelop the existing sports activities and place new ones, working on the concept of well-being through the spatial quality of architectural solutions. The cure consists in designing “therapeutic landscapes”, in which themes, programs and diversified social needs may be combined. The Park entrance area, located near the Colli Aminei station and a high school building, is currently occupied by a recycling facility and it has a difference in height of 8 meters compared to the Park’s level. The difference in height could be overcome through the realization of a gradual descent system consisting of a set of wide ramps and green spaces that from the urban “terrace” of entry would lead to the Park’s level. Along this articulated path, small elements, which could accommodate different facilities for the park, would define the open space and direct the way.

Inside the Park, the area dedicated to the insertion of wellness and sports facilities may be conceived as an area in which experiencing a strong mix between architecture and nature. In this case, it seems interesting to explore new concepts of well-being and sport equipment intended as “therapeutic” which, on the one hand, is more “rooted” to the city of Naples and to the landscape in general and, on the other, operates an integration between closed and open space. The Park itself may be conceived as a large outdoor space, interconnected with the surrounding areas, where it is possible to walk and frequently stop for specific landscape views. The planned paths would allow to retrace the characteristics of the hilly agricultural landscape in the forms that it has preserved. Starting from this node, the area could be expanded in various directions, involving fundamental elements of the hill morphology, through the realization of public spaces linked to the theme of care. In this way it would be possible to create a continuous system which links the area of the valley to those located near the historical centre such as Scudillo and Capodimonte, and to those located towards the belt of the northern suburbs.

Conclusions 

The case study of the San Rocco Valley in the Neapolitan hilly area clearly demonstrates how, through operations aimed at creating interconnected open spaces and, at the same time, at incorporating existing spaces and buildings in an innovative way, it would be possible to transform an unfinished area between artifice and nature into a landscape for the care of citizens in the city. Building a health landscape means grafting a network of relationships, integrating cycle and pedestrian paths, interconnected public spaces and health nodes made up of specialized but open areas and of buildings of the city, safeguarded in their identity.

Ultimately, combining nature and “cure” of citizens requires an overview and the ability to identify experimental fields to be tested in limited areas, with few socially shared moves and to be implemented even with limited resources. By enhancing the “therapeutic” value of buildings and developing an idea of “cure” as “care”, urban architecture and design can be a driving force in a public health policy regime that effectively involves the majority of citizens (Gehl, 1991).

Coastal landscape regeneration: a framework from northern Adriatic

Leonardo Filesi1, Luisa Cattozzo2, Andrea Fiduccia3 and Leonardo Marotta4

1Università IUAV di Venezia, Santa Croce, 1957, Venezia, 30100, Italia;
2Scuola di Dottorato, Università IUAV di Venezia, Santa Croce, 1957, Venezia, 30100, Italia;
3Department of Astronautical, Electrical and Energy Engineering (DIAEE), Sapienza University of Rome, Via Eudossiana 18, 00184, Rome, Italy;
4Studio Associato Entropia, via F. Corridoni 3, Recanati, 62019, Italia;
e-mail: luisa.cattozzo@libero.it

Abstract

System and landscape ecology were used in order to design a more resilient and functional landscape. Using soil regional mapping we model a suitability map (as potential vegetation one). From this we build some scenarios recovering key areas.

Keywords: ecosystem services; landscape assessment; habitat regeneration; vegetation series; system ecology.

Introduction

Our approach is based on the assumption that a regeneration has to be based on landscape Science. In order to manage the ecosystem the design has to take into account the current and potential conditions of natural vegetation within a geobotanic/geomorphological approach. In the northern Adriatic since the middle of the last century the particular ecological value of coastal sand dunes and wetlands for the diversity and wildlife conservation is known (Pignatti, 1952, 1953). Equally interesting is the natural vegetation of areas currently cultivated or variously transformed by man. With regard to the resilience and biodiversity interest it is not limited to only the potential vegetation (typically of forest type) but to all the evolutionary stages dynamically linked to it (different successional stages which define the series of vegetation). In this paper we propose a model that defines a modality of recovery and regeneration of the health status of landscape. Landscape ecology conceptualise the services of the ecosystems (Farina 1998) for human wellbeing and are sensitive to the way the space is transformed by energy and matter fluxes (Odum, 1983), but not necessarily to underlying ecosystem functions. Likewise to the ecosystem services concept, implementing the ecosystem and landscape concepts into landscape planning has the potential to improve the sustainability and ecosystem health in a cultural landscape (Farina 2000).

Materials and methods

In this paper we propose a multiscale approach. The detailed scale model is applicable to three test sites: Bibione Lido, Lido di Venezia, Po Delta. A detailed cartography (1:5.000) of the habitats and the latest generation sensors for multispectral and three-dimensional mapping have been used (thanks to an aerial survey on the Province of Venice performed by UniSky Srl - a spinoff of the University IUAV of Venice see Filesi, Picchio, 2017). On a regional scale, the analysis is based on the GIS. We considered the soil maps (1:250.000) of the Veneto Region and the Emilia Romagna Region, the map (1:50.000) of the Rovigo district for the Po Delta only. From these we have deduced, according to Filesi and Lapenna (2015), the map of the vegetation series (representing only the mature stages in successional key). We have applied to the Veneto Po Delta map the biodiversity (Kier et al., 2005 – modified) and percolation (Farina, 1998) indices. The ecosystem values are calculated using Costanza et al., 1997 data, up to date in 2018 euros.

Results and discussion

Scale of detail:

-Bibione Lido is suffering from severe problems of coastal erosion (Nordstrom, et al., 2009), in this case the projected sand pipeline (Management plan of the beach) is useful but not sufficient if not accompanied by restoration interventions of coastal habitats;

-The Lido di Venezia coastline is now enough stable. We have shown (Filesi e Picchio, 2017) that the excavation of a trench behind the mobile dune and the interruption of mechanical cleaning works have determined over time (just over thirty years) a difference in height of about 1 meter and the spontaneous reconstitution of interesting retrodunal plant communities;

-In the Po Delta where erosion and subsidence are partly offset by the considerable contributions of the rivers Po and Adige, we have a very dynamic and complex situation (Verza and Cattozzo, 2015) with sectors in feed and others in erosion.

On the scale of detail we propose to implement projects, using real data from a case study provided by Filesi et al. (2017) at the Lido of Venice.

Regional scale

The maps obtained, the calculated indices and the size of the areas affected by the different vegetation series make it possible to identify the areas in which it is opportune to intervene with landscape projects. Table 1 shows the increases in the values of average plant biodiversity (according to Kier et al., 2005, modified), of percolation (Farina, 1998), and of surface area, for three of the main vegetation series. The starting levels (first two columns) are different (depending on the percentages affected for example by arable crops, tree crops or permanent meadows). The high value of plant biodiversity in class 3 (Quercus ilex forests and psammophyl vegetation in coastal areas) is mainly due to successional stages linked to it, herbaceous vegetation of gray dunes and mantles (Gamper et al., 2008; Sburlino et al., 2013). The increase in the values of tab 1 underline the need to carry out environmental requalification measures in the areas pertaining to the vegetation series 2 and 3. At the regional scale we believe it is more useful to rely on policies (RDP and similar) based on the evaluation of the effects of old projects: studies in progress in the hinterland (Bosco del Parauro, Mirano - VE) and on the coast (Bosco Nordio, Chioggia -VE).

Conclusions

Regarding the scenarios, we observed that in the three cases (Venice Lido, Bosco del Parauro and Bosco Nordio) thirty years of recover time are an optimal time frame for the reconstruction of the landscape. In the first case, Lido di Venezia - Ospedale al mare (10 ha), the optimal time is not very different from the minimum time since it was a spontaneous reconstitution of the vegetation cover, based only in geomorphological re-shaping. In the second case, Bosco del Parauro (over 15 ha), the starting point was transformation of cultivated fields inQuercus robur and Carpinus betulus woodlands.

Table 1

CORINE LAND COVER | POTENTIAL AND DESIGN OF RECOVERY ECOSYSTEMS | INCREASE VALUES
LEGEND | Mean plant species richness | Percolation index | CLASS | Mean plant species richness | Percolation index | Mean plant species richness | Percolation index | Surface (ha)
Agricultural areas | 2,2 | 0,12 | 2 | 25 | 1 | 22,8 | 0,88 | 0,48
2,39 | 0,33 | 3 | 35 | 1 | 32,61 | 0,67 | 33,64
2,03 | 0,24 | 7 | 20 | 1 | 17,97 | 0,76 | 4152,21

The best scenario can implanted the ecosystem value of the area from and average value of 67 euro per ha to 90 euro per ha in the coastal Po delta. Even after ten years, plant biodiversity and structure were consistent with the project aims. In the third case, Bosco Nordio (over 100 ha), started from a coastal pine forest from which, with appropriate silvicultural interventions, we moved to a Quercus ilex wood, more coherent with the context in geobotanical terms. Here, after thirty years, the results are optimal both in terms of biodiversity and forest structure, both as regards biodiversity and the structure of the successional stadiums connected to it. We started from an already acceptable situation.

Co-benefits of urban green infrastructure: Urban storm water management and public health improvement through landscape design interventions

Bhavna Mishra1

1Doctoral Candidate, Aalto School of Art, Design & Architecture#1, FI – 00076, AALTO, Finland;
e-mail: bhavna.mishra@aalto.fi

Abstract

Green stormwater infrastructure (GSWI) with careful design can not only manage stormwater runoff but also provide a range of co-benefits. Integrated planning of green infrastructure (GI) for stormwater management in urban areas can help to provide multiple benefits and contribute to healthier and livable communities. GI is also prominently featured in the contemporary urban ecological model and is considered fundamental for improving urban quality of life. On this ground, this literature review studies how health benefits are associated specifically with urban GSWIs and how these benefits can be maximised in urban areas. For which, this review with the selection of scientific articles addresses the following questions in comparison GIs. 1) What are the health co-benefits of urban GSWI? 2) Does the interaction and benefit associated with GSWIs limited to one particular type of urban physical setting or scale? 3) What are the various disciplinary research findings and the gaps associated to the promotion of health benefits of urban GSWIs? The studies on the evidence of benefits of GSWIs were discovered geographically biased towards the North American and European context, potentially contributing to a focus on certain types of settings and benefits. Although many types of benefits have been studied, benefits to active living have received much more attention than the reduction of stress, therapeutic healing, social capital and reduction of crime, and mental health and functioning, despite the potential for important consequences arising from the latter. In this review, although a small sample of sources and publications were consulted, the evidence for most benefits is correlational, and even though there are several experimental studies, little is known about the factors responsible for delivering these benefits. Moreover, these factors may vary in importance among cultures, geographic regions and socio-economic groups, for which a broader search of literature is needed. These are the key directions for future research in planning and/or designing GSWIs that would provide or proliferate the several associated co-benefits.

Keywords: urban green infrastructure #1; stormwater management #2; public health #3;

Introduction

Green stormwater infrastructure (GSWI) utilizes natural processes to infiltrate, retain, convey and treat stormwater through different elements such as detention and retention ponds, swales, rain gardens, filter strips etc. On a bigger scale, larger park parcels, conservation lands, and community open spaces are integrated to regulate the stormwater efficiently and at the same time improve the quality of life by bringing communities closer to nature (Benedict & McMahon, 2012; Coutts, 2010). These interventions not only help to reduce the adverse impacts of stormwater flooding but also improves recreational opportunities (Peters, Lenz, & Pauleit, 2017), promotes economic savings (Vandermeulen et al., 2011) and helps conserve biodiversity (Hostetler, M., Allen, W., & Meurk, C. (2011). These interventions are vital to urban areas where lack of nature and stormwater problems are prevalent. These interventions also enhance or maximize the use or functionality of its urban public space offering multiple benefits. Therefore, besides its primary purposes, the GSWI should also be resilient (Meerow, & Newell, 2017), adaptive to climatic variations (Foster, Lowe & Winkelman, 2011; York, Goharian, & Burian, 2015) and meet different user demands while offering places of reprieve and recreation (Cox, 2018).

Drawing our focus to the main intention of the paper, green infrastructure has also been considered as one of the prominent determinants of health and wellbeing in the ecological model of health (Barton and Grant, 2006) and its important role in delivering positive effects on physical health (Ulrich, 1984; Maas et al.,2006), psychological well-being (Bodin & Hartig, 2003; Kaplan,2001), and social cohesion (Shinew, Glover & Parry, 2004). These existing reviews have generally focussed on green infrastructure providing just one type of health benefit, limited to a single discipline or have focussed on one particular type of interaction with nature. However, this literature review identifies the importance of urban “GSWI” in providing health benefits to urban residents and intends to maximise the benefits as they are highly essential for the urban areas. To maximize the health benefits of urban GSWIs, it is highly important to understand its scope in the urban physical setting and scale, the associated health benefit, the various disciplinary approaches to identify the research gap and if it is different from the already known benefits of GIs.

Materials and Methods

A search algorithm was performed to identify a set of published literature concerning the health impacts of green infrastructures dealing with stormwater management. The search was conducted in the Aalto university library database (Aalto-finna) using “green infrastructure”, “stormwater” and “health”, as key terms for the search in titles, keywords, or Abstracts. The documents with relevant terminological combinations of urban green infrastructures, on both stormwater management and human health, were critically reviewed. Most of the search results were found related to the North American or the European context although there was no pre-assumed intention of selecting studies specific to these geographical contexts. The search was conducted in April 2018 and yielded 33 papers for review.

Results and Discussion

Out of the 33 documents, only 13 papers showed the scientific evidence of health co-benefits associated directly with GSWI interventions. The reviewed documents were analyzed according to different variables already argued as important for maximizing the benefits of GSWI in urban areas through practice and research. They are (1) Physical settings and scales, (2) Types of benefits, (3); research discipline. Within each variable, different categories were defined and for each category, a distinction was made between articles dealing with overall GI or with GI specially designed/planned for Storm water management purposes (GSWI).

1) Physical settings and scales: The green infrastructure setting as reviewed through the literature is either related to 1) GI within plot boundaries, or 2) street scale or 3) city scale. In comparison to the reviews based on green infrastructure, GSWI did not receive much weight in the plot boundary settings due to lack of scope or public participation (Burls, 2007). Moreover, since most of the papers showed the close association of urban walkability and attractiveness with GSWI, it has received proportionately more weights in the street levels as well as the city wide interventions. However, specific papers on stress reduction and social benefits of GSWI also showed their close association with improving attractiveness and interaction. Therefore, most of the research focussed towards one type of interaction with GSWI, providing one type of benefit.

Figure 1. Literature review results correlating the types of physical settings, types of benefits, type of research disciplines.

2) Types of Benefits: The reviewed papers projected five types of benefits (Figure.1). Out of the 20 papers on GI, four showed evidence of association of all the five types of benefits together to one type of urban GI intervention. While none of the GSWI papers mentioned all types of benefits at once and were more specific to a single type of benefit. In more than half of the reviewed papers, GSWIs have proved to promote active living in urban areas. The “optimization of social capital and reduced crime” scores the second highest in the chart. However, the “reduction of stress”, “therapeutic healing” and “optimization of mental health and functioning” have scored less and almost weighted the same in relation with GSWIs in the review. However, the evidences for most benefits are correlational, and even though there are several experimental studies the results were more focussed towards the related disciplinary findings.

3) Research Disciplines: The reviewed studies were either from social science, environmental science, health, planning and design, or from a multidisciplinary field of research. Based on the review, benefits of urban GSWIs have been studied more in the planning and design related discipline. Multidisciplinary approach has also gained its attention but was associated with the few newer publications. This showed the significance of the emergence of multidisciplinary approaches for exploring the multiple benefits of GSWIs and their scope in planning and designing for better urban sustainability.

Conclusion

The literature search results were found to be associated only to the North American and European context, and there is a clear bias in the literature with respect to cultural and socio-economic differences between geographic regions. It is thus difficult to determine which of the reported benefits are culture specific and which can be considered universal. Therefore, a broad range of theoretical and empirical review is still needed to further examine the important dimension of the benefits associated with GSWI.

The review has showcased health and community co-benefits along with offering solutions for a variety of important public issues. It is proved that GSWIs have the equal potential of providing multiple benefits as the GIs. However, in comparison to urban GIs, considerable empirical research to explore the role of GSWI in providing co-benefits is still needed in order to involve theoretical and methodological approaches in planning and designing of GSWI for better co-benefits. Even though the classification of GSWI to the physical settings and scale of urban areas did not provide a certain significant result, but has proved that perceiving multiple benefits of GSWIs is not limited to a particular urban physical setting or scale.

The body of literature is broad and spans several disciplines although the majority has been conducted from within the planning and design field. There is noticeable contribution of this discipline in exploring the importance of social benefits associated with the GSWI design than the social science discipline itself. Although many types of health co-benefits of GSWI have been studied, benefits to active living, stress reduction and improving social capital have received more attention as they are highly important for the urban environment since they improve walkability, attractiveness, social interactions and bring urban residents closer to nature.

Overall, this literature review has documented a broad range of the benefits of urban GSWIs. It has been shown that GSWI provides access to natural green spaces within the urban area which is important for facilitating activities that are beneficial for urban health and well-being. However, because the evidence is more inclined towards descriptive findings, mechanisms that are important for delivering these benefits are less known. Therefore, it is highly important to answer the following questions - What characteristics of GSWIs are important for providing multiple benefits?

How do these characteristics may vary in importance in different geographical contexts with different cultures and socio-economic groups? These are important directions for future research if we need to plan and/or design GSWIs to be more effective while providing maximum co-benefits.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisor, Prof. Juanjo Galan, Aalto school of Arts, Design and Architecture, Aalto University, for the valuable advice and support he has given me in the writing of this paper for the conference.

The effect of initiatives and community involvements influence on riverside landscape

Takahiro Yamazaki1

1The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan;
e-mail: sankakuyamataka@yahoo.co.jp

Keywords: government; landscape elements; community activity; riverside landscape

Introduction

In Japan, there is a place called “Mizube”, where the waterside with people use in their daily life. Actually, there are more than 35,000 rivers in the whole nation and people use it to cultivate, drink, cook, and so on. On the other hands, sometime these rivers are overflowing due to Japanese humid climate. Therefore, national, regional, or local government management 35,000 rivers to control the water level.

After the revision of the River Act in 1997, the government aims to manage river not only for water control and water utilization but also for the water environment. For example, creating liveable city through developing a good riverside landscape is one of the important slogans for Japanese river management. This shift encouraged government to implement initiatives for managing the water environment and riverside landscape. It also enhanced local people to act community involvements for enjoying their Mizube life.

Considering this situation, my research question is to discuss the relationship between public and private sector through survey their riverside action. Therefore, I reveal the actual situation of public and private involvement for developing a good riverside landscape. The survey site is an Izari River in Hokkaido, Japan, which flowing through a diverse landscape.

The aim of this research is to discuss the gap between local government and local community with respect to developing a good riverside landscape.

Research Method

Izari River is in Eniwa city. Because of city government aimed to create attractive scenery especially in Izari riverside, the city implemented several public policies by plural section. Due to Izari river supplies the drinking water Eniwa surrounding area, local people are eager to improve the river and riverside environment through community involvement. Some of these actions get a national prize such as Japan River Achievement Award.

In this research, I revealed following three matters. First, I revealed the actual situation of riverside landscape through taking panoramic photograph from all bridges over Izari river and picked up the elements of riverside landscape. Second, I revealed the local government’s project in Izari river through an interview survey and administrative data analysis. Third, I revealed the characteristics of community involvement for developing a good riverside landscape through bibliographic survey such as newspaper articles.

Table-1. Landscape elements of Izari river

Results 1: the actual situation of riverside landscape

Table 1 is the result of landscape elements of Izari riverside. Izari river’s scenery mainly consists following four elements; river administration facility, housing architecture, green area, and forest. Each landscape zone has different kinds of elements and the number of elements is also different. For example, the average number of landscape elements in natural zone is basically 3.0. However, that in urban and rural zone is more than 6.0.

Results 2: local governments’ public policy applied in Izari river

Table-1 shows that the riverside landscape mainly consisted of four elements. Then, I revealed the local governments’ effort for each element.

Governments’ river management section maintains river facilities. Around the Izari dam area, facilities’ design is kept the rule of collar guideline formulated by national governments’ dam manager. The aim of this guideline is to coordinate the total image of dam surrounding area, so river facilities which managed by dam manager harmonised with the natural environment. However, there are several river facility managers such as city government,

regional government, and so on. Therefore, most of the river facilities spoil the scenery due to their manager didn’t concern about landscapes.

There are lots of housing architecture including detached houses and apartments, because Eniwa is a suburban city of Sapporo metropolitan area. In urban area, most of them are regulated based on the zoning system. In order to create a sustainable living environment, some of housing architecture adapted the regulation based on the district plan. City government resolved three district plans along the riverside. Two of them are in urban area, but the

regulation didn’t work for the form or design of architecture. On the other hand, a district plan in rural area which contains the form design regulation effect to create rural housing landscape.

Riverside parks and green space are mainly developed by the city government.

Considering urban situation, river space is the only room for walking or cycling without car impacts. It means that developing green area in riverside is an important project for city government to satisfy the local people. Some projects are operated with subsidies as one of the model projects by the national government. In order to exchange between urban and rural areas, city government develops the cycle path which connected urban areas to rural areas.

Forests are a key element in Natural zone. In riverside area, there are two types of forests.

One is owned by the national government and another is owned by private sectors. Former one is managed based on the governments’ plan. Later one is aimed by the city government to keep attractive natural environments. However, only 0.2% of private forest owners concern the landscape management.

Results 3: The characteristics of community involvements for riverside landscape

Through the bibliographic survey, I picked up seven communities which aimed to improve the Izari riverside landscapes or river environments. Table-2 shows the characteristics of communities such as the background, project term, and main activity.

In natural zone, three community groups try to improve the river environment, because Izari river provides drinking water in Eniwa and surrounding city. One of a group held a festival in dam lake to promote environmentally friendly activity by many citizens. This festival is mainly prepared by executive committee which supported by the city government, national governments’ dam manager, and so on. This committee gives occasion for local communities

to make a relation with the government side.

In urban zone, there are several riverside development projects by the city government.

In these projects, city government makes a chance for citizens to state their opinion or cooperate with the city. For example, Non-Profit Organization called Water Environment Hokkaido support the city government to make water and green master plan. This plan objected to develop green space in riverside, so some projects are implemented with citizen’s involvements. This

kind of community is still working for sustainable riverside environment.

In rural zone, agricultural section of city government formulated the agricultural development plan. This plan referred to the aim of agricultural landscape which is formed by farmers. Based on this plan, farmers community called Environmental Preservation Group action for developing a good scenery. However, only two of four groups cultivate green manure

crops based on the plan and the area of green crops are unstable year by year.

These situations suggest that most of community involvements aiming to develop a good landscape are cooperated with city government. On the other hand, each community has unique motivation or goal. Therefore, community actions basically pass above the divisional boundaries of city government.

Table 2. The characteristics of Community involvements

Conclusion

Through the survey, I reveal the characteristics of action by the city government and the community which aimed to develop a good riverside landscape. As a result, there is different motivation between public and private sectors. City government’s project is implemented by each division such as river management section, green space maintenance section, agricultural section, and so on. Therefore, municipal policies are segmented by governments’ section. On the other hand, community involvements have their unique goal or vision. Therefore, most of the groups take various activities to achieve their aim and these action passes above the divisional boundaries of city government. This is the reason why the gap between public and private sectors caused.

Population decrease is severe impact in provincial cities around the world. Most of local governments’ aim are to develop a good living environment such as creating the scenery. In that case, local government without enough money likely to expect the effect of a public private partnership. In order to create liveable city, local government shall be concerned about the difference which this research shown.

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank Dr. Aya Sakai for advice on research design.

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SESSION IX
Green spaces and health promotion

Environment and health promotion in urban area

Ferrante Margherita1*, Fiore Maria1, Antonio Cristaldi1, Copat Chiara1, Grasso Alfina1, Pietro Zuccarello1, Oliveri Conti Gea1

1Medical, Surgical Sciences and Advanced Technologies “G.F. Ingrassia”, University of Catania, Catania, 95123, Italy
e-mail: marfer@unict.it

Keywords: Environment; social determinants, urban public health; prevention, risk factors.

Abstract

With the rapid urbanization, the importance of understanding relationships between the changing urban environment and human health is increasingly recognized worldwide.

City has an important environmental impact in loss of green space, long commuting times, impact on water, soil and climate (Ghandehari, Emig, & Aghamohamadnia, 2018). The health risks associated with the urban environment are various such as are different the pathologies related too. Infectious and vector-borne diseases (Iguchi, Seposo & Honda, 2018), respiratory diseases associated with industrial pollution (Freudenberg 2000), noise and life styles; degenerative diseases related to noise and unhealthy urban lifestyles (physical inactivity, unhealthy diets, tobacco smoking and harmful use of alcohol and injuries due to motor vehicles) (Wepner & Giesecke, 2018; Oates et al., 2018); climate change related health risk (heat stress and changed patterns of infectious and non-communicable disease) which are considered as one of the biggest health risks in the 21st century with a rising trend.

The complexity associated with urbanization is the major key challenge for health promotion. Urban areas are complex systems such as: water and sewer management, refuse and waste handling, electric and gas power, transportation, medical care, education, communities, etc (Freudenberg 2000). From a social determinants perspective urban areas are an unique laboratory for assessing the aetiology and role of social and environmental determinants on health and disease (Freudenberg, 2000). The Erice 50 Charter “Strategies for Diseases Prevention and Health Promotion in Urban Areas” was unanimously approved Study Group “Building Hygiene” of the Italian Society of Hygiene, Preventive Medicine and Public Health (SItI) designing several effective strategic actions and best practices to develop urban regeneration interventions and improve the urban quality of contemporary cities (D’Alessandro et al., 2017).

The synergy between urban green spaces and a healthy city: state of the art and review of the available literature evidence

Davide Gori1

1DIBINEM – Department of Biomedical and Neuromotor Sciences, University of Bologna, 40126, Bologna, Italy
e-mail: dedegori27@gmail.com

Introduction

Nowadays there is a special focus on the importance of green/blue spaces and urban green as a way to improve better living and health in modern cities. Links between green spaces and better health have been identified thoroughly in history, however, many of the mechanisms behind such links were poorly understood or lacked rigorous scientific evidence.

Aim of the present study was to conduct a systematic review of the available evidence in the medical databases and to offer a review of the existing evidence on the health effects of green space in urban areas.

Materials and methods

We searched the most important medical literature databases for studies focusing on the effects of green spaces on health. Only original articles, reviews and meta-analyses written in English, involving humans, and with an available Abstract were considered for critical review or inclusion in this analysis. Grey literature search for additional documents performed, along with hand search of journals, professional organizational websites and guideline clearing houses.

Results and discussion

A total 34 articles were considered as eligible after screening. Articles were mainly observational, with cohorts and cross-sectional studies representing the vast majority of study type. The great majority of the retrieved articles focused on the effects of living in close proximity or having accessibility to green areas. Accessibility was reported through the use of surveys or measuring the amount of green spaces (i.e. through the use of GIS systems). Outcomes were evaluated through subjective reporting, clinical data or using objective measures (i.e. measurement of physical activity per day through the use of accelerometers). Evidence shows that there are many public health benefits originating from green-blue areas in the cities, and through different modalities, such as psychological relaxation and stress reduction, increased physical activity and mitigation of exposure to air pollution, excessive heat, noise and other harmful factors of the urban environment. Some articles also reported side effects like major prevalence of asthma, allergies and injuries in people living near green areas.

According to the current literature available and the actual evidence anyway, green cities seems to have numerous benefits that greatly outweigh the potential negative effects of green spaces such as exposure to allergenic pollen and injuries. Furthermore, most of the harmful effects are associated with poorly managed green spaces; so they can be reduced or prevented through proper planning, organization and maintenance of urban green areas. The evidence collected, in addition, shows that the many proven health benefits of urban green space are mostly effective for economically disadvantaged communities, children, pregnant women and the elderly.

Conclusion

A city of well connected, attractive green spaces that offer safe opportunities for urban residents for better living and to have healthier citizens is capable of reducing demands on health services and contributing to a stronger economy. It is also essential that all populations have adequate access to green spaces, with particular priority for disadvantaged communities, as a universal value for health and well-being in the cities of the future.

The role of ICT in public open spaces: the Cyber-Cardeto park

Andrea Galli1, Ernesto Marcheggiani1, Eva Savina Malinverni2, Roberto Pierdicca2, Carlos Smaniotto Costa3

1Università Politecnica delle Marche, Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie, Alimentari ed Ambientali, Ancona, 60131, Italy;

2Università Politecnica delle Marche, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, Edile e dell’Architettura, Ancona, 60131, Italy;

3Universidade Lusófona, CeiED Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Education and Development, Lisbon, Portugal
e-mail: a.galli@univpm.it

Abstract

More than a half of world’s population lives in urban areas today, where life quality depends considerably on a healthy green urban environment. The possibility of making the living population more aware of the potential network of healthier spaces -more often green open spaces- around them plays a pivotal role in the game. Information Communication Technologies (ICT) represents a key issue for risen people awareness and the sharing of peered information. ICT and mobile devices have become a key agent of contemporary human being by enhancing several aspects of our daily life. ICT can upgrade a Public Open Space (POS) to the quality of Cyberpark since their contribution is twofold: on the one hand, they provide users with new instruments to enhance their experience in using and discovering a place. On the other, they represent a valuable source of information very useful in design and management of POS.

Given the importance of such matters, a framework of COST Action 1306 from 2014 to 2018 (CyberParks: Fostering knowledge about the relationship between Information and Communication Technologies and Public Space) has been dedicated to POS where the use and/or embedding of ICT creates synergies between humans and landscape. A “Cyberpark” does not replace the real physical spaces but offers a wide range of possibilities derived from ICT tools: analysing big data, supporting public involvement processes, aiding in planning and management of POS.

Within the curse of CyberParks Project, some case studies have been set out to shed light on the actual impact of ICT for boosting interactions among people and POS. The major outcomes of such an experiment are shown in the paper concerning the case study of Cardeto Park in Ancona, Italy. 

Keywords: Public Open Spaces; ICT; Cyberpark; Digital Footprint

Introduction

The most relevant aspect of the ICT lays in their ability to enhance communication with users, transforming the management of public open spaces into interactive processes. Use of ICT might transform common Public Open Spaces (POS) into a new way of seeing parks; a “Cyberpark”. We can see ICT contribution as twofold: on the one hand, technological tools and interfaces a enhance user experience helping them to discover and explore the place. On the other hand, they represent a valuable source of information on the user behaviours which could be useful in many ways, from data collection to intelligent datasets used to feed management and maintenance of POS.

Monitoring and tracking the so-called User Generated Data (UGDs) represent the future pathway for observing, recording, and analyzing the dynamics of our environments (i.e., cities, urban open spaces, rural areas, etc.). More in general, the behavior of people who live these spaces (Chua et Al., 2016). This approach was tested in a real case scenario on the Cardeto Park in center Italy (Ancona). The experiment interested an urban park space with relevant cultural and natural values and had been conducted on behalf of the European COST action “Cyberparks Fostering knowledge about the relationship between Information and Communication Technologies and Public Spaces” (www.cost.eu/domains_actions/tud/Actions/TU1306) involving more than 70 experts from different scientific domains and coming from 29 European countries from June 2014 to May 2018.

Many different typologies can be made out among POS users: Residents, who can enjoy the park on a daily basis; Tourists, who pay occasional visits to POS for short times in search for leisure experiences; Scientists who look for specific information about fauna, flora or cultural aspects. Despite this differences we can focus our attention on common needs (Khromova et Al., 2016): basic needs (e.g. an area that would met minimum standards of accessibility and safeness), emotional needs (e.g. an area that would be pleasant to see and alive for social interactions), cultural needs (e.g. knowledge and awareness), spiritual needs (e.g. an area that would offer space for reflection) and rational needs (an area that could be used for practical purposes). Probably, the actual behaviours of visitors when they explore a POS are determined by a mixture of all these needs. For this reason, the idea to investigate this complex topic by the aid of ICT, implementing a sort of quantitative approach, seems a very interesting challenge to face. The paper exactly deals with that topic, showing first results of this on-going research promoted under the umbrella of “CyberPark COST Action 1306” above mentioned.

Methodology

POS aiming to become smart, from the point of view of e-services offered to common visitors and tourists, have to tackle a key issue: understating their needs. This by allowing them to access proper information about cultural and natural features of whatever point of interest in a public space and then monitoring each individual behaviours. If possible, in the most effective, faster and less costly way. Usually, tourists are exposed to the unfamiliar environment. Therefore a fast retrieval of information is fundamental for their decision-making. Indeed, the possibility to access to relevant contents of a place, through location-based services, can facilitate their choices, changing the way how every point of interest is perceived and finally creating more memorable and unique experiences. To this purpose, of course, some important aids come from the worldwide adoption of mobile devices, which has replaced traditional orientation, guides and way-finding maps. Mainly because built-in cameras, global positioning system (GPS) sensors, and Internet connection open the way towards a new manner of experiencing spaces, starting (e.g.) by interacting with an App expressly dedicated at the points of interest within the Cardeto Park, like for this case study. Anyway, this is also true for common visitors, thanks to contextual information to which they can access. Indeed, by enjoying such context-awareness services, both tourists and residents can easily access to interactive experiences and, even if they don’t have precise knowledge of a certain area, they can experience unfamiliar places in a proper way.

While they are living their personal trip within a public space, it’s left a “digital footprints” of their behaviors, in another word they generate information that are geolocated and this embodies numerous opportunities, as offers the possibility of working with high spatial and temporal data, always available and always updated. The collection of digital footprints offers advantages in different domains: security, cities management, retail, cultural heritage (Yoshimura et Al., 2018), but it is of particular interesting in urban tourism (Chua et A., 2016) which is very much related to the quality of place and visitors’ motivation.

Therefore, tracking, collecting and analyzing digital footprints can be a valuable source of information for users, planners and stakeholders. Users can make their decisions with more awareness about the place they are going to visit. Planners and stakeholders can get a wide range of user’s feedback to evaluate the attractiveness and usability of different places. This may result in improved quality of POS to better meet users’ needs.

Results

Following these criteria, the first step of the project was the design and the implement of the specific App (named “CyberCardeto” it can be downloaded at the following address: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=it.univpm.dii.cardeto) to guide the visitor towards main cultural and natural attractions sprawled within the Cardeto Park. Actually, it encompasses a considerable Cultural Heritage, including Romans relics, as well as buildings built before Second World War. Furthermore, a lot of Mediterranean species of flowers and trees are diffused in the park, enriching local ecosystems of a very impressive natural value. Through the App all POIs in the park were characterized (photos, texts, other info), so giving visitors the opportunity to acquire more awareness on the inside heritage and also to follow specified pathways along the park. To investigate user’s behaviours, a set of Bluetooth beacons were positioned in a spot close to each selected POI. This enables a user, the closer to that spot, to interact with the POI, being localised by the communications between the beacon and his smartphone. The users’ movements are collected by the sensor, and they can be used for extracting statistics about the performances of a certain place in relationship with that specific user. The use of these proximity technologies (the network: beacon, App/smartphone, GPS), has allowed collecting any kinds of information within the Cardeto Park: the crowdedness at certain POI, the patterns of users flows among POIs, the time spent in each POI. All these data represent relevant information that can be used by planners to improve or better manage the park (Fig. 1 ?). Also, user can benefit from these technologies, by receiving notifications bringing contextual information in real time about the space they are discovering. All cultural and natural elements of the park heritage are stored in a cloud service as POIs, then the mobile application stays always connected to data, and the system drives the user to the next available POI.

Conclusion

Improving the quality of urban POS is an endless task. Anyway, no sustainable city could be imagined if there are no healthy and livable green urban spaces, where citizens as well tourists can spend the time to enrich their awareness on the cultural and natural heritage of a place trying to conserve its identity. Of course, by getting pleasure in visiting a place and sharing experiences with other users. For this, the designers and decision makers involved in the POSs maintaining, have enormous responsibilities for what concerns the capability of POSs to meet users’ needs. Frequently, this capability has not achieved by planners because they are n’t informed through a systematic collection of data describing the real behaviour of users.

The experience here illustrated seems to tell us that it’s quite easy to try to fill this gap if some potentialities of ICT are taken into serious account by decision makers who manage the POSs. Collecting digital footprints by ICTs is just a first step along this road. Technologies are ready to be used, but they are to be used within a clear framework of planning able to boost participative processes also. Exactly in this direction, we are working to improve our research for the near future..

Session IX - References

D’Alessandro, D., Arletti, S., Azara, A., Buffoli, M.,et al. (2017). Strategies for Disease Prevention and Health Promotion in Urban Areas: The Erice 50 Charter. Annali di Igiene, Volume 29, 6, 481-493.

Freudenberg, N. (2000). Health Promotion in the City: A Review of Current Practice and Future Prospects in the United States. Annual Review of Public Health , 21,473-503.

Ghandehari, M., Emig, T., & Aghamohamadnia, M.(2018). Surface temperatures in New York City: Geospatial data enables the accurate prediction of radiative heat transfer. Sci Rep, 2;8(1), 2224.

Iguchi, J.A., Seposo, X.T., & Honda, Y. (2018). Meteorological factors affecting dengue incidence in Davao, Philippines. BMC Public Health, 18,(1),629.

Oates, G.R., Phillips, J.M., Bateman, L.B., Baskin, M.L., Fouad, M.N., & Scarinci, I.C. (2018). Determinants of obesity in two urban CommUnities: PerCePtions anD CommUnity-Driven solUtions. Ethn Dis; 28,(1),33-42.

Wepner, B. , & Giesecke, S. (2018). Drivers, trends and scenarios for the future of health in Europe. Impressions from the FRESHER project. European Journal of Futures Research, 6, 1, 2.

ASTELL-BURT, T., FENG, X. & KOLT, G. S. 2014a. Is neighborhood green space associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes? Evidence from 267,072 Australians. Diabetes Care, 37, 197-201.

GASCON, M., TRIGUERO-MAS, M., MARTÍNEZ, D., DADVAND, P., ROJAS-RUEDA, D., PLASÈNCIA, A. & NIEUWENHUIJSEN, M.J. 2016. Residential green spaces and mortality: a systematic review. Environment International, 86, 60-67.

KEDDEM, S., BARG, F. K., GLANZ, K., JACKSON, T., GREEN, S. & GEORGE, M. 2015. Mapping the urban asthma experience: Using qualitative GIS to understand contextual factors affecting asthma control. Social Science & Medicine, 140, 9-17.

KENDRICK, D., MULVANEY, C., BURTON, P. & WATSON, M. 2005. Relationships between child, family and neighbourhood characteristics and childhood injury: a cohort study. Social Science & Medicine, 61, 1905-15.

WHO. 2010. Parma declaration on Environment and Health. Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health “Protecting children’s health in a changing environment”. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe.

Chua A., Servillo L., Marcheggiani E., Moere A.V., (2016). Mapping Cilento: Using geotagged social media data to characterize tourist flows in southern Italy. Tourism Management, 57, 295-310.

Khromova A., Smaniotto Costa C., Šuklje Erjavec I., Pierdicca R., Malinverni E.S., Galli A., Marcheggiani E. (2016). Is the mediated Public Open Space a smart place? Relationships between urban landscapes and ICT – The Cost Action TU 1306 CYBERPARKS. SCIRES, Vol 6, Issue 2 , 17-28, e-ISSN 2239-4303, DOI 10.2423/i22394303v6n2p17, © CASPUR-CIBER Publishing, http://caspur -ciberpublishing.it.

ASTELL-BURT, T., FENG, X. & KOLT, G. S. 2014a. Is neighborhood green space associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes? Evidence from 267,072 Australians. Diabetes Care, 37, 197-201.

GASCON, M., TRIGUERO-MAS, M., MARTÍNEZ, D., DADVAND, P., ROJAS-RUEDA, D., PLASÈNCIA, A. & NIEUWENHUIJSEN, M.J. 2016. Residential green spaces and mortality: a systematic review. Environment International, 86, 60-67.

KEDDEM, S., BARG, F. K., GLANZ, K., JACKSON, T., GREEN, S. & GEORGE, M. 2015. Mapping the urban asthma experience: Using qualitative GIS to understand contextual factors affecting asthma control. Social Science & Medicine, 140, 9-17.

KENDRICK, D., MULVANEY, C., BURTON, P. & WATSON, M. 2005. Relationships between child, family and neighbourhood characteristics and childhood injury: a cohort study. Social Science & Medicine, 61, 1905-15.

WHO. 2010. Parma declaration on Environment and Health. Fifth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health “Protecting children’s health in a changing environment”. Copenhagen: WHO Regional Office for Europe.

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SESSION X
Healthy landscapes and socio-ecological aspects

River management: an opportunity to implement landscape policies

Romina D’Ascanio1, Anna Laura Palazzo1, Maria Beatrice Andreucci2

1Università Roma Tre, Department of Architecture, Rome, 00184, Italy

2Sapienza University of Rome, Faculty of Architecture, Rome, 00196, Italy
e-mail: romina.dascanio@uniroma3.it, annalaura.palazzo@uniroma3.it, mbeatrice.andreucci@uniroma1.it

Abstract

The man-made environments close to the fluvial systems have led to an alteration in terms of water quality, exposure to hydrogeological risks and landscape degradation. If, for the first two, the Water Directive provides strategies and methods, landscape qualities still remain unaddressed. Furthermore, water space could be recognized as part of the urban green space as it plays an important and attractive role for people to use and enjoy.

This paper enlightens multidisciplinary tools and approaches capable to combine river health and the landscape quality issues within a strategic vision towards urban regeneration, both presenting a review about River Contracts experiences dealing with policy’s scenario, and describing the Green Blue Infrastructure approach in its main design implications. River Contracts are integrated strategic planning tools for river management able to promote environmental and landscape restoration through prevention, mitigation and monitoring of hydrogeological and landscape emergencies. They represent an effective approach to systematise issues treated so far separately. Green Blue Infrastructure is a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas able to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services (EC_ENV, 2016), notably including rivers, which helps conserve and restore the natural features by improving water quality, landscape and natural habitats.

In conclusion, both approaches/tools, when implemented as part of a River Strategic Plan, provide not just the primary benefits of water quality improvement and the decrease in the hydrogeological risk, but also a wide range of landscape and social benefits.

Keywords:Green Blue Infrastructure; River Contract; Landscape Design; Landscape Policy.

Introduction

Although rivers have historically been fundamental elements for the supply of cities, serving as places to produce water, energy and transport routes, contributing to the urban and peri-urban landscape, during the urban expansion they suffered a lack of an effective planning.

In 2000, the Landscape Convention has recognized to the landscape its cultural and identity value due to the perception of the people and communities and their environmental and social relation. However, on the one hand the landscape, in general, has now been acknowledged, on the other hand the river landscape suffers of a lack of attention, being mostly linked to ecological and hydrogeological issues. The Water Frame Directive (Directive 2000/60/EC, WFD) establishes an innovative approach for water management based on river basins, the natural geographical and hydrological units and sets specific principles like expanding water protection, achieving good status of water bodies by 2015 and improving public participation in planning. Moreover, the Directive requires EU Member States to establish river basin districts and for each of these a River Basin Management Plan (RBMP). Even if RBMPs have an innovative approach, several potential conflicts arise such as the mismatch between river basin and administrative boundaries, the links between spatial planning and river basin planning, potential conflicts between inland navigation and ecosystem protection in rivers; and economic and social demands for water supply (EEA, 2012).

Furthermore, the landscape has never been explicitly considered in the WFD, even if the river landscape plays a very sensible role in the environmental and social system, which involves the population. The landscape and social benefits of rivers are generally poorly understood and need to be put on equal terms with the ecological and natural elements (Colucci, 2007; Ingaramo, Voghera, 2016). Moreover, in order to stimulate the participation of the communities in river management, as wished by the WFD, it is fundamental to understand how river landscapes are perceived and experienced, notably in peri-urban areas, where they play a significant role in conveying biodiversity in their capacity as ecological corridors (Pinto, Maheshwari, 2014). Such alignment between policies and design measures is liable to address manifold issues. Since the early 2000s, in Italy, following the French experience of Contrats de Rivière, which began in the 1980s, the use of the River Contracts (RC) was applied first in the Lombardy and Piedmont Regions and then in all Italian Regions, with different approaches and outputs (Bastiani, 2011). The River Contract Chart (2010) clearly defines RCs as negotiated and participated processes aimed at limiting eco-landscape degradation and redeveloping the territories of the river basins and sub-basins. Furthermore, RCs are voluntary and strategic tools between local authorities and private partners that pursue not only the improvement of water and the prevention of hydrogeological risk, as the WFD indicates, but also local development and community participation.

Materials and methods

The work started with a desktop analysis about the River Contract framework in Italy and their coherence with the “2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” in pursuing Goal 6 “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all”, Goal 11 “Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, and Goal 12 “Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns”. Some reflections gained during the First Italian Congress of the National Observatory of River Contract, held in Rome in February 2018 have been highlighted. Along with innovation trajectories proposed for the XI River Contract Table for an integrated approach, some problems persist in the application of the River Contract on all Italian basins. Through the review of some RC cases from the literature, it emerged that successful water management programs/projects related to improvement of landscape quality are closely linked to the Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI) design. As a matter of fact, GBI is deemed to address both water management and landscape enhancement at the regional level, such as the establishment of river parks, and at the local scale with the re-naturalization of river banks, application of phytoremediation systems and the construction of artificial wetlands.

Results and discussion

Working on the definition of the River Contract means to operationalize the principle of participation envisaged by the WFD and finalize it to the research for actions, measures and concrete proposals to be implemented in the management of the rivers in order to asses water quality and obtain also landscape improvement.

In 2015, the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity, constituted by 17 Sustainable Development Goals and 169 targets. Actually, it is interesting how RCs, their projects and partnerships find very strict affinity with the SDGs and especially the following Targets: a) Target 6.6 By 2020, protect and restore water-related ecosystems, including mountains, forests, wetlands, rivers, aquifers and lakes; b) Target 11.4 Strengthen efforts to protect and safeguard the world’s cultural and natural heritage; c) Target 12.2 By 2030, achieve the sustainable management and efficient use of natural resources.

In November 2017, the National River Contracts Observatory was established at the Ministry of Environment, coordinated by the Ministry itself, the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA), Regions, Basin District Authorities and experts in the field of River Contracts. The aim of the Observatory is to constitute a structure of direction and coordination in order to meet the needs for implementation harmonization of the River Contracts on a local, regional and national scale. In the first Conference of the Observatory, on the one hand, innovative approaches emerged, especially from the regions of northern Italy, which first implemented this tool with important financial endowments, such as the Lombardy Region (€ 261.3 million). On the other hand, the debate has highlighted problems in central and southern Italy, in the process from the “Statement of intent” to the subscription of the Contract. In Italy, differently from France and Belgium, RCs can benefit from private support, as in the case of the Lombardy Region, where the Cariplo Foundation has promoted various interventions in the four regional RCs. Moreover, some Regions have introduced the River Contract in their Urban Regional Law such as Lazio, Tuscany, Apulia, Emilia-Romagna Regions etc. In turn, some cities, like Rimini, have included the Marecchia RC within its 2007-2017 Strategic Plan. From a desk review of RCs, the improvement of water quality has been targeted thanks to the design of GBI encompassing wetlands and phytoremediation systems. For example, in Gorla Maggiore, a set of constructed wetlands surrounded by a riparian park on the riverbank of the Olona River was planned (2009) and implemented (2012). In the municipality of Castelnuovo Bozzente, in 2012 a phytoremediation plant was built clearly enhancing the landscape quality and the touristic offer of the Pineta Park.

The impacts of this kind of projects include an improvement in the management of water resources for the benefit of people and biodiversity, evidencing that GBI provides additional services both at a small and large scale. Phytoremediation contributes to a general redevelopment of ecosystems thanks to the use of plants that positively affect the natural context, also from a landscape and recreational point of view.

Conclusions

In order to offer the maximum benefits from the landscape and ecological point of view, Green Blue Infrastructure needs to be placed within a coherent river strategy and river district planning framework that reconciles the socio-economic needs with those of protection of nature. For this to happen, financial support is essential to foster the governance tools having GBI in their DNA, such as the River Contracts, the Ecological Network Contracts at local or district level, the eco-social networks based on the recognition of the identity of the landscape and their exploitation for social and recreational purposes. Clearly, the protection of water resources, their sustainable use and the enhancement of water environments are key factors for the conservation, protection and management of the landscape. As a matter of fact, the Blueprint to safeguard Europe’s water resources indicated that Green Blue Infrastructure and nature-based solutions can greatly contribute to the provisioning of ecosystem services and should be adopted as measures in the implementation of the Water Framework Directive and the Flood Directive through the territorial planning (Liqueta, 2016; Andreucci, 2017). The tools for the river management, in this more complete and complex implication proposed by the River Contract and the use of the GBI, although still late in some regions of Italy, represent a significant framework for the improvement of policies on fluvial landscape, recognizing the latter im8portant characteristics for the resident communities (Palazzo, 2015; D’Ascanio, Palazzo, 201). The River Contract is therefore an “activator” of landscape and territorial policies with the GBI approach methodologically framing the landscape project.

Co-designing sustainable energy transition in rural landscapes: reducing carbon footprint and safeguarding landscape democracy and ecosystem services

Paolo Picchi1a, Davide Genelettia, Simone Verzandvoortb, Annemieke Smitb, Kees Hendriksb, Sven Stremkecd

aDICAM, University of Trento, Via Mesiano 7, 38123 Trento, Italy

bAlterra, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 3-3 A, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands

cLAR, Wageningen University, Droevendaalsesteeg 3, 6708 PB Wageningen, The Netherlands

dAcademy of Architecture, Amsterdam University of the Arts, Waterlooplein 211-213, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Keywords: energy transition; landscape democracy; community; ecosystem services; renewable energy

Abstract

The transition to a low carbon future requires procedural and substantial knowledge to inform a sustainable transformation of the landscape. Renewable energy technologies (RET) and associated interventions have already started to give rise to new energy landscapes, some of which cannot be considered sustainable (Pasqualetti, 2000). In many cases centralized renewable energy initiatives continue to face opposition by local communities, civil associations, nature managers and others due to concerns over tradeoffs between the renewable energy supply (RE) and the other ecosystem services (ES):

“landscape modification is the most important factor driving the (lack of) local acceptance for most technologies” (Bertsch et al., 2016, p. 473). In order to be considered sustainable, interventions must not cause critical trade-offs between the provision of RE and the supply of other ES (Stremke and van den Dobbelsteen, 2012). This contribution introduces a framework for the co-design of sustainable energy landscapes (Stremke, 2014; Stremke and Picchi, 2017). This can help to balance the renewable energy target with landscape quality through the diversification and integration of RET, safeguarding the landscape and the supported ES. The approach is illustrated by means of a case study in the Netherlands conducted in 2014. Results show that focus groups and stakeholder participatory mapping are key techniques to balance a transition towards renewable energy sources; the elaborated scenarios show how a community landscape can provide the targeted amount of RE without compromising the other ES if landscape principles are co-designed with communities.

Introduction

The Energy transition to a low carbon future it is necessary for our health (Leal Filho et al., 2015). Yet the renewable energy technologies (RET) modify the land use and the landscape infrastructure through their spatial footprints. With landscape infrastructure, we refer to “the natural or constructed physical or beta- structure of the landscape delivering material or immaterial benefits and services and the recycling of energy and materials”

(Belanger, 2009). Those landscapes whose infrastructure is modified by RET are defined “energy landscapes” (EL) (Stremke, 2014; Frantál et al., 2014). Indeed the sustainability of the energy landscapes is based on the fact that the introduction of RET should not cause crucial trade-offs for ecosystem services (ES) (Coleby et al. 2012; Stremke 2015). For example, the installation of a wind farm can affect a view on the landscape, reducing Cultural ES (landscape beta-structure). The planting of energy crops or the installation of photovoltaic fields (PV), another example, can modify the landscape (landscape physical structure) and consequently afflict the supply of food or change the water regulation. Local communities in rural context frequently oppose the installation of RET because of the associated landscape change and the unavoidable trade-offs occurring in the supported ES in time and space. Yet the landscape change induced by RET needs to be strategically planned and designed in a steering logic (Meadowcroft, 2007), envisioning the desirable futures for communities, in order to overcome the lack of acceptance and safeguarding the energy democracy (Kunze and Becker, 2014) and the landscape democracy (Arler, 2011). A method for planning and design sustainable energy landscapes has been formulated and is based on the application of long term visions for planning and design sustainable energy landscapes (SEL): the Five-step Approach (FSA) (Stremke et al., II, 2012). The FSA foresees participatory processes for the landscape analysis of the present conditions and the formulation of the long-term visions with stakeholders, and since the presented here case study application, it includes an ES approach through participatory mapping (Brown and Reed, 2012; Fagerholm et al., 2012). This contribution aims to present the application of the FSA steps 4 and 5, the relevant steps in codesign, in the context of a rural landscape in the Netherlands.

Materials and methods

The FSA is a design approach in planning based on the use of all the available Renewable Energy Sources (RES), as much as embodied in the landscape (Van den Dobbelsteen et al., 2011) and the optimization of the energy fluxes in an energy-conscious spatial planning and design based on the Second Law of Thermo-dynamics (Stremke et al., 2011). The input data come from a multi-layer landscape analysis which includes Energy Potential and heat Maps, (EPM) and ES hot spots (Stremke and Picchi, 2017), the planned near future developments and the regional community scenario. Those input data allow the formulation of desirable future scenarios. The figure 1 indicates the flowchart of the FSA as in the case study application (Stremke and Picchi, 2017); this was led in 2014 as finalization of the DEESD project, Sustainable Energy and Ecosystem Services in Schouwen-Duiveland. In DEESD the FSA step 4 and 5 were handled through a stakeholder workshop to map ES hot spots and the RET most suitable areas (task 1), a focus group to discuss landscape design principles (task 2) and an expert panel (task 3).

The long-term vision for this region henceforth referred to as „Zeeland 2040‟, includes four perspectives on the landscape, society and economy of the region in 2040, envisaged by representatives of societal actors in the region (inhabitants, regional policy makers, entrepreneurs, companies, civil society organizations). In step 3, the FSA normally illustrates a set of four possible far futures and then develop an energy-vision for each scenario. In DEESD project this step was reduced to a table with four possible RET combinations to reach the targeted amount of energy as in „Zealand 2040‟. The DEESD application of step 4 and 5 was conducted on scenario II, Regional Communities that considers large scale interventions and absence of policy and envisages the largest surface of solar panels on fields and energy crops. The motivation for this choice was based on the expectation that governmental regulation will decrease in the coming decades to give space to decentralized developments in economy and society. These local developments are currently initiated by citizen groups and entrepreneurs, e.g. the development of local energy cooperatives.

The participatory mapping workshop in the task 1, consisted in two mapping activities: the mapping of ES hotspots (usually in the step 1 of the FSA) and the mapping of RET most suitable areas (steps 4-5). In the DEESD project application, these were merged in one workshop. Participants mapped the ES hotspots enclosing them in colored areas (Raymond et al., 2009; Bryan et al., 2010; Brown and Reed, 2012; Fagerholm et al., 2012). In the second mapping activity stakeholders were asked to indicate RET most suitable areas for the scenario II (in line with step 4 of the FSA). A set of RET for this scenario was presented as stickers, for the total estimated energy provision by 2040 is 3525 TJ per year. The objective was to site all the stickers at disposition (here, the estimated future energy demand of the island according to the SRES scenario „Regional Communities‟). After the mapping activity a focus group session was used to explore different landscape design principles, to discuss how to minimize the trade-off between RE generation and ES supply. This task was determinant to understand how locals would design the renewable energy landscape in order to safeguard both the targeted RE supply and the other ES. The third task required experts to overlay the RET and the ES hot spots areas and through a matrix approach (Burkhard et al., 2012) to detect potential spatial trade-off or synergies between RET and ES in coincidence with specific land use/land cover classes and elements of the landscape infrastructure (e.g. channels, dams slopes, natural plants communities corridors, tree lines and filed hedges). Trade-offs or synergies were expressed by a range of five values: strong trade-off; light trade-off; neutral; light synergy; strong synergy (Jackson et al., 2013). The main criterion for the trade-off assessment was the scarcity of ES supply (Farber et al., 2002).

The data sources were: the landscape analysis that presents informative maps per thematic layer (DEESD, van Lierop, 2013); the research “Sustainable Action Research in de Zeeland Delta, Ecosystem Services in practice” (Verzandvoort and Smite, 2013, Alterra, Wageningen UR and others) that provides a qualitative assessment for the supply of ES based on “landscape user types”; the recreation monitoring Schouwen 2007, a report on the recreation at Schouwen Duiveland (Visschedijk et al., 2007, Wageningen UR) that provides quantitative data on the number of landscape users for recreational activities and different sites on the island, and the number of users for different facilities.

Results and discussions

In this section we will focus on the results on the co-design activity in steps 4-5.

The workshop and the focus group took place at Zierikzee, the main town on the island in November 2014. The participation was opened to all stakeholders that were joining a Forum day on Zeeland 2040. Backgrounds included farmers, provincial officials, landscape heritage and nature organizations, a renewable energy technology company, an official from the regional service of water works. A group of seven couples of stakeholders joined the workshop session. A group of 12 stakeholders joined the focus group session. From the participatory mapping we obtained seven maps, each including a sheet layer with the information on ES hot spots and another on RET preferred sites. From the focus group we obtained two possible designs principles: the corridors design principle and the cluster design principle (figure 2). The first pondered the option to design RET along the linear features of the landscape (PV panels on the dykes slopes, wind turbines along the roads and the dams, energy crops as marginal cultures between the dykes and the fields). The second one proposed that RET could be clustered in three large areas around the main urban settlements, Zierikzee, Scharendijke and BurghHamsteede.

Stakeholders preferred the cluster design principle. The reasons were that the corridor principle could cause fewer afflictions for cultivated areas, but it was firmly opposed by a group of stakeholders that were affirming that changing the aspect of the identity linear features of their landscape, as dykes, which are relevant for their landscape cultural value, would not be accepted. This option was considered neutral for food provision, but it could cause crucial trade-off with cultural ES. The second strategy on the contrary was afflicting the food production, converting a great extension of arable land and part of grassland into energy crops and solar fields, setting aside the wind park in offshore, but it was preserving the main cultural value of the landscape, their dykes. A high trade-off was observed between the energy crop that in the specific example would be corn, with the inland food production and recreation, if this would be cultivated in place of the actual grassland. While according to the landscape design principles, recreation along wet ecological corridors and channels, dykes, field edges and rural paths, would be safeguarded.

According to Bennet et al. (2009), data on trade-offs for ES are valid at the local scale, and their relevance in other context need a proper interpretation. For example Gee and Burkhard (2010) showed the concern of residents of Schleswig-Holstein for off-shore wind farms in the North Sea, because afflict the cultural value of the free horizon of their seaside. In Schouwen Duiveland on the contrary residents prefer having off-shore wind farms, preserving the views of the inner rural landscape. This clearly shows that trade-off between cultural ES can only be assessed locally through participatory processes and depends on the adopted landscape design. Further what became evident during the process, in close relation to cultural ES, was a lack of analysis of the visual aspects of the landscape. A couple of stakeholders indicated cultural value in a particular view that people can have over the polders. This fact reveals the importance of an analysis of the visual aspects when dealing with RET. This information was actually missing in the landscape analysis and could have supported workshop participants in thinking in terms of valuable views of their landscape and visual threat with RET.

Conclusions

The results of the workshop and the expert trade-off analysis suggest that the workshop and the focus groups are key techniques to balance a transition towards renewable energy sources. The landscape design principles discussed with stakeholders addressed the expert analysis, and will orient the planning of the energy transition (figure 3). We conclude with two future efforts in relation to cultural ES that resulted the most controversial and relevant for stakeholders. The participatory mapping could be extended to an additional landscape layer, where stakeholders can trace the valuable view on the landscape. Further the focus group can be enhanced by new tools in landscape representations as videos that could be more valuable to translate the discussions and the decisions into virtual landscape experiences.

Acknowledgments

This research has been financed by the Erasmus Placement Program, DICAM, University of Trento, PhD School in Environmental Engineering, Italy, and supervised by the Landscape Architecture chair group, Wageningen University, and Alterra Institute, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

Urban regeneration and socio-ecological systems:
Rethink purpose through the green infrastructure approach

Maria Beatrice Andreucci1, Sergio Malcevschi2, Andrea Tartaglia3

1Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, 00196, Italy; 2Retipolivalenti Association, Pavia, 27100, Italy; 3Polytechnic of Milan, Milano, 20133, Italy 
e-mail: mbeatrice.andreucci@uniroma1.it

Abstract

The opportunities that come from framing green blue infrastructure as a multifunctional network that forms a fundamentally vital part of the city are immense. This requires more than simply caring for the aesthetics of existing and future urban and peri-urban green spaces. Combining recreation with flood risk management, heritage with urban cooling, health promotion with economic growth and social inclusion imply re-consider the structural configuration of our Natural Capital, in terms of specific socio-ecological functions of the urban green spaces, just as we upgrade and adapt other forms of infrastructure. We also need to contemplate how to incorporate nature into buildings, districts and public spaces, and to define how the quality of the grey infrastructure of our streets and public realm could be improved through nature-based technologies and solutions (NBS). We need to fundamentally rethink the way we plan, design, implement, and manage the city’s green blue infrastructure (UGBI). While the UGBI strategy is not only about supply, it is clear that qualitative supply above all else is central to urbanites’ needs. With increased supply come opportunities to address health, well-being and accessibility, improved quality, renewal of degraded and post-industrial estates, help for people to meet their aspirations, and the ability to tackle entrenched issues like urban biodiversity, provision of ecosystem services, landscape democracy and resilient communities. From territorial level to the architectonical scale UGBI and NBS are technological solutions complementary and alternative to traditional systems for the processes of urban and building regeneration and adaptive transformation. In the proposed contribution, some implications for the urban landscape as well as ecological networks are discussed, also on the basis of selected Italian case studies.

Keywords: Urban Green Blue Infrastructure; Nature Based Solutions; Ecosystem Services; Adaptive transformations; Urban Resilience.

Introduction

NBS are technological solutions complementary and alternative to traditional systems for the processes of urban and building regeneration and adaptive transformation. They represent an intrinsically place-based approach. As a matter of fact, the introduction of natural elements must consider correctly the climate and environmental characteristics of the area to guarantee durability and cost and resources containment in the maintenance of the infrastructure. Thus, the regeneration of the urban fabrics as well as the realisation of new (green) infrastructures improve the resilience of urban systems and their life cycle performances. “These techniques oblige planners and designers to deal with a continuous becoming that takes the environmental technological project back to its original predictive and anticipatory nature. This approach is supported by new models and tools for assessing and controlling resilience which can be applied not only ex-post, but especially ex-ante, such to become important in supporting the planning phase” (Mussinelli et al., 2018).

Moreover, NBS and UGBI allow a multi-scale approach that can lead and give continuity to the decision process from the politics to single local interventions but always tied together by the systemic abilities of natural elements.

Materials and methods

The capabilities of the various stakeholders to provide and communicate evidence of the multiple benefits produced by nature based solutions and technologies are of capital importance for mainstreaming green infrastructure (Andreucci, 2017). This position relies on various approaches, peculiarities and limits met by the diffusion of methods and tools aimed at assessing multiple UGBI benefits, and ultimately resilience.

Through the critical analysis of selected Italian case studies (Turin, Rome, Milan, etc.), evidence and explanation of different performance indicators are consistently provided, targeting the communication to a composite audience (decision makers, practitioners, researchers, educators, and the wider public).

Aerial view Parco Dora, Turin (Peter Latz, 2012). Photo credits Latz und partners

Results and discussion

The relevance and different levels of attention to the ecological, economic and social aspects paid by the various governance and implementation frameworks will also be explored. Results and findings with respect to ecological, environmental, social and economic matters will be discussed, highlighting major gaps and possible ways forward.

Conclusions

UGBI can be carried out in different contexts: territory reinforcement projects, EIA procedures, as well as urban regeneration programmes, often supported by meritorious subjects (i.e. foundations, eco-social volunteer networks that promote local quality, etc.).

The European paradigm of green blue infrastructure (EC, 2016) can be effectively applied at both urban and peri-urban scales, and this will only happen by means of general programmatic tools (urban plans), as well as specific ones (Urban Ecological Networks).

Different programmes would successfully support the contribution towards a shared strengthening of the local resilience, raising the collective awareness towards synergic social, ecological, environmental and economic values, now at risk due to global change. This paradigm shift would create the premises for a gradual transition to a local cohesion, also related to future uncertainties. In order to be effective, UGBI must be consistently carried out in a framework of local co-resilience measures, where a number of public and/or private subjects share a socio-ecological reconstruction programme.

These activities represent strategic components of the Green Economy (Malcevschi et al., 2017) and must be methodically connected with other green economy components.

Elsa Morante Cultural Center Park, Rome (LC-Architettura, 2011). Photo credits LC-Architettura

The Agricultural heritage landscape protection. The FAO GIAHS program

Prof. Mauro Agnoletti

Director – Laboratory on Landscape and Cultural Heritage

School of Agriculture – University of Florence
e-mail: mauro.agnoletti@unifi.it

Abstract

Today, the world is facing numerous challenges in front of changes in almost every sphere of life. This clearly seems to be a transition period in the economic, social, cultural, technological and political fields together with climate change and its consequences. According to scientists, the impact of these changes is stronger due to the effect of unsustainable practices carried out by human activities. Examples of these practices are the incorrect, imbalanced and unsustainable use of natural resources, as well as untenable development models, which do not consider long term impacts or “side effects” of activities conducted.

The rural development model promoted in the last decades has not only shown to be ineffective to solve the economic problems of many rural areas , but also contributed to the loss of cultural values associated to rural communities. This has brought to the degradation of valuable land use systems and landscapes shaped by several generations of farmers.

As one of the human activities which has a direct relationship with nature and environment, agriculture is considered as one of the main drivers of the negative trend that is being followed, representing the greatest immediate threat to species and ecosystems. In fact, unsustainable farming practices result in land conversion leading to soil erosion and degradation, habitat loss, genetic erosion, inefficient use of water, pollution impacting wild and human life.

Nevertheless, when agriculture is practiced in a sustainable way, it can preserve and restore habitats, protect watersheds, and improve soil health and water quality. In fact, the use of sustainable and agro-ecological practices is the key feature distinguishing resilient agricultures developed over centuries, based on long experience and proven traditions. This kind of farming may be considered as less productive from modern-intensive systems, but it has ensured sustainable yield over time, thanks to time-tested technologies and traditional know-hows.

Based on this idea, in 2002, FAO launched the idea of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS), to identify and safeguard agricultural sites that have survived using traditional techniques and are still providing many services to the ecosystem, while maintaining landscapes, a huge agrobiodiversity, ancestral knowledge transmitted through generations, and strong cultural and social values. From 2015, based on the outcome of the 39th FAO Conference, GIAHS has become an FAO corporate programme, with a stable structure and clear contribution to FAO’s mandate and objectives. The background of creation and maintenance of these systems are farmers’ efforts to overcome disadvantageous geographic and harsh climate conditions and to increase and stabilize crop yields in a sustainable manner.

Building on generations of accumulated knowledge and experience by smallholders, family farmers and indigenous communities, these systems have been adapted to ever changing environment and climate conditions which finally have acquired resilience and robustness so as to ensure food and livelihood security in the local communities and reduce risks. Today the FAO program is protecting 50 landscape across the world and is the largest program of the UN dedicated to the protection of agricultural heritage.

An approach to measure the effect of land management on pollinator communities in the semi-natural habitats of the Pistoia valey.

Simone Marini1, Anna Camilla Moonen1

1LandLab, Institute of Life Sciences, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, 56127 Italy
e-mail: simone.marini@santannapisa.it

Abstract

Agro-ecosystems are facing a progressive degradation and simplification, caused by intensification of agricultural practices and land use change. Simultaneously, in Europe, an alarming decline in managed honey bees, bumble bees and other wild bees was registered. However, our knowledge on population health of wild bees is scarse. The wild bee decline has been imputed to the combined effect of three main factors: parasites, pesticides and lack of floral resources in landscapes. Thus, in order to preserve wild bee diversity, a series of actions were implemented by the European Union, highlighting the importance of semi-natural habitats (SNHs) as source of plant diversity which improve wild bee diversity. In addition to chronic causes, wildfires and heat-waves are able to immediately lead to local extinction of populations. Controversely, in many cases the fire effect was positive enhancing flower resources, and thus (mainly generalist) pollinators. However, the effect of fire on pollinators, and plant-pollinators interactions is poorly studied and deserve higher attention by scientists.

With the project “Management effect on pollinator community in the semi-natural habitats of Pistoia valley”, recently started in March 2018, we aim to estimate how the management intensity of SNHs and wildfire determine the wild bee community and plant-bee interactions. In the project, recently managed or long-term (>5 year) Mediterranean coppice wood will be investigated. In particular, the project will try to disentangle the following questions: (i) are wild bee communities affected by wildfire and management intensity? (ii) are the plant-pollinator interactions affected by wildfire and management intensity? (iii) Does landscape composition and amount of burned area affect wild bee community composition?

Sixteen coppice wood focal areas have been selected in the municipality of Montale (Pistoia, Italy), an area affected by a vast wildfire (about 380 ha) in July 2017. In each focal area management regime and intensity will be determined by interviewing the land managers, and the land use in a 1km radius around each sampling area will be investigated to assess land use cover and post-fire surface. Wild bee community composition will be investigated through pan trap triplets (yellow, white, and blue) and open transect walks once a month. Flower abundance and vegetation cover will be quantified in each site.

Since wild bees need flowers-rich SNHs, we expect that bee diversity and abundance will be higher in recently managed and/or burned sites, which are expected to host more flower resources. In addition, higher management intensity, as well as the effect of fire, will positively affect plant-bee interactions. At landscape scale, wild bee richness will be higher in areas with lower percentage of burned areas and in these areas the specialist bee species will be more abundant.

This project was founded by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia e Pescia.

Keywords: wild bees; management intensity, post-wildfire, landscape scale

Introduction

Agro-ecosystems face a progressive degradation and simplification, following intensification of agricultural practices and land use change (Haines-Young, Potschin, Kienast, 2012). Simultaneously, in Europe, an alarming decline in managed honey bees (Potts et al., 2010), bumble bees (Goulson, Lye, Darvill, 2008) and other wild bees (Koh et al., 2016) was registered. However, our knowledge on population dynamics of wild bees is scarse (Lebuhn et al., 2013), resulting in the 79% of wild bee species (1,535 species in Europe) having unknown population trends, and 56.7% of species received Data Deficient (DD) IUCN category (Nieto et al., 2014). Goulson, Nicholls, Botías and Rotheray (2015) recently imputed wild bee decline to the combined effect of three factors: parasites, pesticides and lack of floral resources in landscapes. In addition to chronic causes of wild and honey bee decline, wildfires (Lazarina et al., 2016) and heat-waves (Rasmont & Iserbyt, 2012) are able to immediately lead to local extinction of populations. In the Mediterranean area, including the Italian peninsula, each year wildfires can destroy vast areas devoted to agriculture, semi-natural habitats (hedgerows, meadows, fallows, road verges and woodlots, including coppice woods – hereafter SNHs) and even natural parks.

Landscape management is of crucial importance for wild bees: in fact, the European Union implemented a series of actions in order to preserve wild bee diversity, highlighting the importance of SNHs as source of plant diversity which can improve wild bee biodiversity (Nicholls & Altieri, 2013). At landscape level, semi-natural habitats are the key objective because they are a source of plant diversity having a cascade effect on wild bee diversity by offering pollen and nectar resources, nesting sites and overwintering sites (Nicholls & Altieri, 2013). Vegetation composition is determined by SNH types and their management. Through conservation and correct management of SNHs at landscape level, creating ecological corridors, it is possible to sustain wild bee populations (Krewenka, Holzschuh, Tscharntke, Dormann, 2011). At the same time, a healthy environment for wild bees, implies a healthy and rich environment for the managed honey bees, and therefore a higher income for local beekeepers.

Unfortunately, especially in the Mediterranean area, SNHs can be affected by wildfire. In such areas, the impact of fire is defined by the interfire interval, season, intensity, size, and spatial patterning of fires (Keeley, Pausas, Rundel, Bond, Bradstock, 2011). Nowadays, fire can be controlled by fire suppression strategies or by applying prescribed fire, influencing the fire regime of an area (Keeley, Pausas, Rundel, Bond, Bradstock 2011). The reaction of biota to fire regime is actually poorly known mainly because of its complexity. In particular, knowledge gaps involve (i) the animal responses to fire and (ii) the interactions between fire and ecosystem processes such as herbivory and pollination (Driscoll et al. 2010). The fire effect on pollinators needs to be studied in detail (Brown, York, Christie, & McCarthy, 2017), because of the complex cascade response that fire events start in vegetation and pollinator communities. For example, flower resources usually have an initial increase following fire, boosting pollinator communities (Potts et al., 2003). Mola and Williams (2018) found that, after the early bloom when bumble bees were active both in burned and not burned sites, their activity persisted only in burned sites, where within-species flower resources lasted for longer periods. Wood-nesting bees are potentially the most affected by fire events losing both nesting sites and resources: in fact, the community is simplified toward generalist bees in the first years, but the plant-bee network recovered quickly in an Argentina xeric biome with a long history of human-induced fire (Peralta, Stevani, Chacoff, Dorado, Vázquez, 2017).

In wildfire affected areas, plant–pollinator interactions take place in a matrix of burned and unburned sites, facing local-scale fire effects and landscape-scale effects, the latter which are even less understood. In this context, nest location, floral resource and mobility of the wild bee species are the most important drivers determining re-colonisation, but also other pollinators traits, such as voltinism, are potentially important. On the other hand, plant traits will drive the flowering responses to fire: phenology, growth form, bud location, response to bud damage and seasonal changes in bud exposure (Brown, York, Christie, McCarthy, 2017).

With the project “Management effect on pollinator community in the semi-natural habitats of Pistoia valley”, recently started in March 2018, we aim to estimate how the management intensity of SNHs and wildfire determines the wild bee community composition and plant-bee interactions. In the project, recently managed or long-term (>5 year) Mediterranean coppice wood will be investigated. In particular, the project will disentangle the following questions: (i) are wild bee communities affected by wildfire and management intensity? (ii) are the plant-pollinator interactions affected by wildfire and management intensity? (iii) does landscape composition and amount of burned area affect wild bee community composition?

Materials and methods

In the municipality of Montale (Pistoia – Italy), 16 wood coppice areas inside and around the burned area (around 380ha) were selected, from here on called focal areas. Eight of them were affected by the fire event, while the other 8 were not. Each focal area was also selected based on management age: 0 - 5 years from the last cut for the recently managed areas, > 5 years for the not managed ones. In conclusion, focal areas will be divided in 4 groups: unburned and recently managed, unburned and not recently managed, burned and recently managed, burned and not recently managed (Fig. 1).

Figure 1: Coppice wood patches selected in the burned (reddish area) and unburned areas, according to managing events and burning state. The map in background is provided by ©OpenStreetMap contributors under CC BY-SA license.

In order to assess the potential effect of the proportion of SNHs in the surrounding landscape on wild bee community, as well as the effect of the amount of post-wildfire surface, each of the 16 focal areas will be the central point to define 16 circular landscape sectors of 1 km radius (hereafter focal landscapes). The distance between the focal areas need to be at least 200m to ensure a certain degree of independence, permitting overlapping among focal landscapes. In any case, the subsequent statistical models will take in account for spatial dependence of the focal areas. In each focal landscape the cover of each land use will be digitalized from aerial imagery data and validated in field.

In order to sample the wild bee community, pan traps will be set in each focal area. Pan traps will be made according to Westphal et al. (2008): plastic soup bowl will be sprayed with UV-bright yellow, white, and blue paint. A triad of bowls of the three different colours will be mounted on a single wooden stick, forming a cluster, hereafter named triplet. In each focal area six triplets will be set at least 20 meters distant from the element’s border in order to avoid the edge effect. The triplets will be spaced at least at 20 meters apart to reduce competition among them. In the first year, monthly sampling rounds per year will be carried on starting from May and ending at the beginning of October. In the second year, samplings will start in March and will end at the beginning of October. Triplets will be placed at herbaceous vegetation height and they will be filled by approximately 350ml of water with a drop of detergent. Each triplet will be left active for 24 hours in good weather conditions. Determination of wild bees will reach species or morphospecies level. In order to assess the visitation pattern of bees to flowers, open transects will be set according to Westphal et al. (2008). This will help to understand resource usage by bees.

Moreover, at each sampling round, the vegetation structure and composition will be assessed in focal areas. Vegetation data will be collected using variable plot sizes to account for the minimal pattern of vegetation (typically 150 square meters – 50m long X 3m wide). Flower abundance will be investigated in 20 plot of 1 square meter per focal area.

In order to test the relationship between wild bee community, wildfire event and management age, the following descriptors of the wild bee community will be computed and modelled as dependent variables: (i) richness, (ii) abundance, (iii) Shannon diversity index, (iv) Simpson diversity index. Each dependent variable will be tested against local variables: (i) burned or not burned status, (ii) management age, (iii) sampling round. In order to account for the structure of the error, data will be analysed using Generalized Linear Mixed Models (GLMM) including each SNH landscape ID and spatial dependence as random factors. In order to trace a picture of the resource usage made by honey bees and wild bees, interaction data will be treated as networks linking flowering plants and visiting insect. Networks will be analysed using the bipartite R package, and modeled using GLMM. In order to understand the effect of the different land uses and the amount of post-wildfire area, the GLMM models at landscape scale will be similar, using the amount of each land use type at different buffer from the SNH sampled (ideally 100m, 200m, 500m). Each model will be computed in R.

Expected results

Since wild bees need flowers-rich SNHs, we expect that bee diversity and abundance will be higher in recently managed and burned areas, following a probable more widespread flower bloom in such areas. However, post-wildfire areas may be plenty of generalist wild bee and honey bees when the vegetation will start the recovery. In the second year we expect a growth of diversity indicators especially in recently managed and post-fire sites.

At the landscape scale, we expect a positive correlation between richness of wild bees and the total surface of surrounding SNHs, regardless of SNH typology. Moreover, we expect that the area affected by wildfires in the surrounding landscape will negatively affect wild bee richness, depauperating specialist bee species.

Conclusions

From this project we could better understand how the recovery after wildfire will affect wild pollinator community dynamics. In addition, we could understand how the wild bee community and plant-bee interactions change basing on coppice wood management. The project is of high relevance at national, regional and local scale, since it is the first Italian project which try to understand how management, and especially wildfire, affects the wild bee communities in SNHs. This knowledge will help to enhance the management of coppice woods at local scale, maybe increasing the pollination to crops nearby, such as fruit trees.

Moreover, this project could be also of interest for bee-keepers, since an improved management of SNHs could benefits also honey bees in the region, which actually have to face problems with chestnut trees, and it could attract more farmers to diversify their activities with bee-keeping, a solid economic activity in difficult financial times. Moreover, a renewed management option for SNHs, positive for wild bee, could also buffer the negative effect of highly impacted cultures such as nursery, spread in the Pistoia region.

Acknowledgments

This project is founded by Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Pistoia e Pescia. We wish also to thank Comune di Montale, partner of the project.

The design of a Kinder garden green area:
from guidelines to executive project

1Trondoli Isabella, 2 Minelli Marcella, 1Giorgioni Maria Eva

1 Dept. Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Bologna, 40126 Bologna, Italy

2 Landscaping Studio Minelli-Negroni, 42121, Reggio Emilia, Italy
e-mail: isabella.trondoli@studio.unibo.it

Abstract

The positive effect of nature on people and particularly on the psycho-social growth of children is well known and proved (Kellert S., 2002). On the other hand, in the last few years children are spending less and less time outdoors and in contact with nature (Louv R., 2016).Green school areas often are the only available location, for many children, to experiment and develop a connection with the natural biodiversity. The goal of this project is to encourage children to spend more hours outside, strengthen their connection with nature and, hopefully, originate a deeper bond with natural and wild life in the future. Moreover, we wish to define a standard planning for a green school area able to stimulate and encourage a relation among children, flora and fauna. The designed kindergarden area is located within the ‘Ecovillage Residential Center’, near the suburbs of Modena Town (in North of Italy) where buildings and green areas are designed considering above all a high water sustainability and the wild life enhancement.

The goal of the school garden design is to duplicate outside the indoor building infrastructure, including classrooms and closely connect the two environments (Meskanen S., 2009). The area includes 4 ‘outside classrooms’ designed in accordance with a specific theme. The first garden is a butterfly garden including a scholastic vegetable garden for a direct experience with plant growing and insect life. The second and third areas are didactic gardens and represent colours and seasons for the stimulation of the five senses over the year. The last forth area is a playing garden where children can socialize and test their physical potentiality. The plant selection reflects the didactic, aesthetic and pedagogical features of an indoor classroom, excluding poisonous species. Moreover, in designing a particular attention was focused to feasibility, constrains and limits from users and customers.

Keywords: School garden; Thematic gardens; Scholastic vegetables garden; Butterfly garden.

Guidelines and garden project

The design of a kindergarden green-area is based on different ideas that follow the existing regulations and involves a conscious subdivision of the space. In fact, the aim of the project is to define children’s areas in order to enhance the bond between kids and nature.

Primary, safety guidelines were followed during the development of the project, not to mention the maximization of its pedagogic value. In addition, the budget for the structure and the maintenance costs for plants had to be low.

The project location is inside of an Eco-Residence Area near Montale Rangone in the Province of Modena, in the North of Italy. The location is characterized by a high efficiency regarding energetic demand, particulates emissions and, overall, water use. One of the major aspects was to process an ecological thinking and a better understanding of all natural cycles in kindergarden scholars that will, hopefully, lead to a greater respect for the natural world (Donati, Schenetti & Scalcaterra, 2013). In order to achieve it, the design of the area is similar to the North European primary and kindergarden school green-areas, divided in specific open air spaces, called atrium (Meskanen S., 2009). Each atrium was identified by only one theme and activity (Fig. 1). The divisions between atriums was obtained by several bushy species planted in hedges for an optical screen function and a ludic-didactic role. In this way, schoolyard provides both playful and didactic-pedagogic purposes. Furthermore, the subdivision of the garden area reflects the inner building blueprint and teachers may be more inclined to teach outdoor to increase the bond between scholars and nature. For this reason, the scent and the color gardens are equipped with desks and chairs like a normal classroom.

The kindergarden design includes 4 areas, each one different for dimensions and purpose: the Butterfly and didactic vegetables Garden (74 sqm), the Garden of colors (91 sqm), the Garden of smells (72 sqm) and the Garden of native plants (134 sqmq). Themes, activities and plant selection of each garden were defined according to the dimensions and exposure of the area and its view from inside the building. In addition, the green lawn was preferred but paved paths were designed to connect the 4 rooms and allow low motility kids to reach all areas of the garden, and especially the butterfly garden including the vegetable beds.

The butterfly garden hosts plants useful for feeding adults and larvae of autochthone butterflies, such as Buddleja davidii or Pyrus piraster, and species like Foeniculum vulgare and Daucus carota characterized by a very close relationship with specific butterflies, interesting for an educational processing. The above-mentioned area also contains a vegetable garden that has demonstrated great beneficial effects on children as it increases their connection with nature and classmates, providing a teamwork experience. Mainly, scholars learn to take care of plants, watch the development and growth of each organism and particularly, recognize the original form of everyday food (Rabitti & Magnolini, 2008).

The Garden of colors, as mentioned before, provides a space with woody desks and chairs in order to recreate the classroom ambience. Primary theme for this garden is the chromatic seasonal variation of plants in order to explain to children the correlation between the stages of plant life cycle and colors (Alfieri M. et al, 2009). Some of the used plants are Cornus sanguinea, Kerria japonica ‘Pleniflora’ and Viburnum opulus. The Garden of smells provides another open space classroom. Its theme specifically focuses on the sense of smell to increase the curiosity of children for plant odors. Species were selected for fragrant leaves and flower, blooming times over the year but not simultaneous to avoid overlapping and smell confusion. Plants as Rosmarinus officinalis and Salvia officinalis were chosen in order to remind the domestic smells as well as recognize some plant used for cooking. The garden of native plants has overall a ludic purpose. The central area of the garden is completely empty and can be used by children as a playground. In the Northern side a sandbed provides an additional recreational space intentionally used by kids to increase their hand motility. Plants for this garden were selected among the autochthon species of the region to establish a knowledge of local vegetation and a more friendly and familiar perception of the environment outside the school. In addition, the school entrance shows a variation of seasonal cycles thanks to a cherry tree double row. These trees provide a better esthetic view of both kindergarden and the close parking area.

According to the required low budget, all the selected plants exhibit low costs in both purchase and maintenance, thanks to high adaptability to environment and tolerance for mechanical maintenance. About this matter, all areas were designed to allow the passage for gardening machines according to existing regulations.

The total estimated costs resulted about 56 €/sqm with significant differences among the 4 gardens. Plant purchasing represents the highest cost (31,2%). The butterfly garden and the garden of native plants show the highest costs, in terms of plant purchasing, irrigation, pavement, utilities and furniture. However, cost by square meter shows that the biggest garden is the least expensive whereas the butterfly garden is the most expensive, as the most furnished.

As expected, the most furnished garden area with the most paved portions represents the highest cost (82 €/sqm) whereas, logically, the less furnished area presents a lower price tag (46 €/sqm). This project using mostly natural materials not only offers a pedagogical-didactical advantage but reveal a winning strategy from an economic point of view. The most important consideration regarding the project was to bring children to a closer contact with the natural world and therefore the goal was to eliminate gradually the mental barrier dividing the outside world with the inside world, seen in many schools nowadays. Furthermore, in accordance with Ecovillaggio’s program, water sustainability agreement was respected by filtering and harvesting rainwater. In addition, the green area maintenance includes composting and recycling of all biological materials such as mowed grass, wood from shrub pruning and organic waste from school. This school was planned not only to stimulate a better bond with the nature in children but also for teaching a new philosophy and lifestyle on a better usage of resources and high sustainability processes for the future.

Fig. 1- Masterplan of the kindergarden with the four open air classrooms and the cherry tree avenue including carpark.

New technologies for the landscape setting: immersive views

Gabriele Garnero1, Enrico Fabrizio2, Valeria Minucciani3

1Interuniversity Department DIST, Università e Politecnico di Torino, Torino, 10125, Italy; 2DENERG, Politecnico di Torino, Torino, 10129, Italy;
e-mail: enrico.fabrizio@polito.it

Abstract

Visibility analyses are no more aimed at spot investigations, but have become an instrument within the planning and authorization process of local authorities, allowing to check design alternatives in an interactive way. However, today more innovative tools allow a greater immersion and the possibility, not only for the designer, but also for citizens, to realize the implications in terms of visual design of new developments and choices.

The new Mixed Reality (MR) approach, where virtual objects are superimposed to reality through glasses or other devices that allow direct viewing of both what surrounds the observer and of the virtual images seems to have the greater potential to be applied for landscape settings analysis since it is possible to directly observe (virtual) project objects and entities into a (real) environment. Some preliminary investigations in this area are presented in this work.

Keywords: Mixed reality; Virtual scene; Observer

Introduction

Through visibility analysis, it is possible to give designers and stakeholders tools that can be used to verify the impacts of what is being planned and to estimate the landscape setting of new developments. Therefore, visibility analyses have recently become not simply an instrument aimed at spot investigations, but also an instrument that enters the planning and authorization process, allowing both the designer and the landscape authorization authorities to check design alternatives in an interactive way.

At the same time, web-based visualization technologies that present dynamic virtual environment have gaining attention in many land-related fields, as VR (virtual reality) provides the user with a sense of being surrounded by real world (Jamei et al., 2017). As a matter of fact, since 2011, researchers in the landscape and planning sector became aware of the fact that virtual environment games may be used as a source of information for players, researchers and decision-makers (Bishop, 2011), to elicit environmental preferences and judgments, explore human decision making processes, and support public multi-disciplinary decision-making. What seemed visionary in 2011, has quickly become reality since there has been a rapid grow of virtual and augmented reality also in the 3D landscape visualization (Lovett et al., 2015).

Various applications of VR to the design of cities have been done with regards to pedestrian thermal comfort, audio-visual design of an urban public spaces (Echevarria Sanchez, 2017), urban sound environments (Jiang, 2018), smart transportations, cognitive psychology and behaviour in architectural and urban design, personal health and well being (Boulos et al., 2017).

Materials and methods

In fact, today more innovative tools allow a greater immersion and the possibility, not only for the designer, but also for citizens, to realize the implications in terms of visual design of new developments and choices.

To this regard, various techniques can be used (see Figure 1).

In the AR (Augmented Reality) information concerning real existing objects is conveyed to the final user through portable instruments that are directed towards the areas of interest (Minucciani & Garnero, 2017). It is therefore an overlay of computer generated content on the real world, but the computer generated content and the real-world content are not able to respond to one another.

In the VR (Virtual Reality) an immersive, purely virtual scene is displayed, thus alienating the observer from the real world (George et al., 2017);

Contrarily, in the MR (Mixed Reality) virtual objects, for example projected entities, are superimposed to reality through glasses or other devices that allow direct viewing of both what surrounds the observer and of the virtual images (Ohta & Tamura, 2014). It is therefore an overlay of synthetic content that is anchored to and interacts with objects in the real world and in real time. In a MR experience computer-generated objects are visibly obscured by real objects in the physical environment. In other words, MR can be seen as a subset of AR, but not all AR is MR.

Figure 1. Main differences between VR, AR and MR.

It is precisely these latest technologies that have the greater potential, at the moment, both in terms of technical works (e.g. in case of underground networks and infrastructures), but above all, from the point of view of the landscape analysis and setting, in which it is possible to directly observe project objects and entities.

There are various possibilities for using MR in the fields of planning, landscape and cultural heritage. Hereinafter some examples:

-it is possible to insert an element designed within a real context, in order to evaluate in an immediate and immersive way, what are the visual and functional interactions of the proposed new development in relation to the pre-existing ones;

-the above can also be used in relation to possible participatory decision-making processes, in which citizens can be called to express their opinion not following the examination of graphic representations, but seeing directly and in place the outcome of the design, through technologies that, although complex, allow for immediate interactions;

-in the cultural heritage field, it is possible to insert in the real and current environment architectural features and buildings that have been moved or destroyed: the virtual modeling of an object, carried out from historical information or, in the event that the object has only been moved, performed through photogrammetric modeling with the production of point clouds, allows to insert the missing object in the context for which it was born, thus giving the visitor the possibility to evaluate the realistic insertion.

Results and discussion

To give an example and a practical application of the use of MR in at a design and planning stage, in Figure 2, an example of a virtual reality realized by some of the Authors of this work is provided. It was done to verify the design of a new pavilion and new trees within a green public space in Turin.

Figure 2. Example of MR visualization for design: frame of the immersive video of a new pavilion into a urban square garden.

In this case study, for the model of the pavilion and the trees, models available on specialized open datasets on the net were used, and were placed inside a green area belonging to District 2 of the City of Turin. Once the projected objects were anchored to the surrounding reality through a special QR Code, the observer can freely move around the park, verifying in the simplest way, i.e. walking and watching, the effects of the insertion of the project in the pre-existing reality.

In this application, the open source Unity software tool was used as a graphic engine, while the Microsoft HoloLens glasses were used as display device, whose features are easily available on the net.

Conclusions

XR applications are widely spreading in many fields, from gaming to science. The main features of the MR applied to design and planning into spatial problems were summarized in this work. A simple example of application was realized in order to verify the feasibility and the potential of the proposed approach for the design of new architectural objects into real existing green spaces.

Extreme heat events, urban landscape, and human health

Chia-Tsung Yeh, Tsai-Yun Liu

Graduate Institute of Urban Planning, National Taipei University, Taiwan

Extended Abstract

Extreme heat events, characterized by stagnant, warm air masses and consecutive nights with high minimum temperatures (Luber and McGeehin, 2008), are natural hazard that could rapidly increase in magnitude in the 21st century due to global climate change (Wilhelmi et al., 2004). The impacts of heat wave on public health has become threats to public health in the context of global climate change. Extreme heatwaves, such as that witnessed across Europe in 2003, can result in a significantly higher mortality (Luber and McGeehin, 2008). The effect of extreme temperature on morbidity and mortality is an emerging concern of public health and also an important issue of urban planning and management.

Future scenarios of Climate change presented in the lPCC AR5 predict an increase in average surface temperature at a global level (Stocker et al., 2013) and the IPCC Special Report on Extreme Events (SREX) concludes that it is very likely that there has been an overall increase in the number of warm days and nights at the global scale (IPCC, 2012). If there has been an increase in daily maximum temperatures, then the number of heat-related diseases and deaths is likely to have also increased (Smith et al., 2014). These changes will contribute to the burden of diseases and premature deaths, particularly in population subgroups with limited adaptive capacity (Michelozzi et al., 2009). Excess mortality and morbidity related to heatwaves have been experienced worldwide over the past two decades (Vandentorren et al., 2004; Basu, 2009; Michelozzi et al., 2009). This is especially so for large cities where there is a concentration of people and because of the urban heat island effect (Wolf and Mcgregor, 2013).

Numerous studies of temperature-related morbidity, based on hospital admissions or emergency presentations, have reported increases in heat events due to cardiovascular, respiratory, and kidney diseases (Hansen et al., 2008; Knowlton et al., 2009; Lin and Chan, 2009) and the impact has been related to the duration and intensity of heat (Nitschke et al., 2011). The basic processes of human thermoregulation are well understood, but the relationships in different community settings and for different groups are not yet well established (Smith et al., 2014). Health risks during extreme heat events are greater in people who are physically active. This is important for recreational activity outdoors and it is relevant especially to the impacts of climate change on occupational health (Kjellstrom et al., 2009). The causes of vulnerability to health associated with climate change and climate variability include individual and population characteristics and factors in the physical environment (Smith et al., 2014). Location also has an important influence on the potential for health losses caused by climate change (Samson et al., 2011).

In this study, we focus on the influences of climate changes and urban landscape on the health status of urban residents in Taipei metropolitan area. We analyzed urban landscape composition and configuration and their correlations between heat stress during extreme heat events. We used Landsat TM satellite images to convert land surface temperature. Then we estimated the heat index of the study area with the regression of land surface temperature and the data of meteorological station. Heat diseases record during extreme weather events was extracted from the National Health Insurance Program and combined with urban landscape data derived from national land survey data to analyze the correlations between urban landscape and heat diseases in the Taipei Basin area.

We also propose a risk of heat assessment framework under heat stress, including exposure, sensitivity and vulnerability indicators. Spatial patterns of human vulnerability to heat stress in the Taipei Basina were then assessed and mapped. The Taiwan’s National Health Insurance Database were applied to analyze spatial patterns of heat-related morbidity and also their relationships between human vulnerability to heat stress. In Taiwan, according to Personal Information Protection Act, residential locations of patients are confidential. Data set of outpatients reveal the spatial locations of hospital. However, cross-district hospital visiting may cause the error when identifying spatial location of patients. In order to overcome the difficulty, this study made an assumption that residents visit local-district hospital for common cold the flu. Using the ID of the data selected by common cold and flu to identify spatial location of patients of heat related diseases.

In this study, we answer the following questions by analyzing the relationships between extreme heat events, urban landscape and human health:

‒ What are the spatial patterns of heat stress and heat-related morbidity in urban areas?

‒ What are the correlations between morbidity of heat-related diseases and urban landscape?

‒ What are the spatial patterns of human vulnerability to heat stress in Taipei?

According to the risk assessment framework of the Fifth Assessment Report of IPCC, we analyzed the patterns of risks in Taipei Basin area under heat waves. This study results reveal the spatial patterns of heat diseases and the influences of urban landscape on the prevalence of heat diseases under extreme heat events. The prevalence and the spatial distribution of diseases under the impacts of extreme heat events were also be analyzed. The results of this study provide information for future urban planning and public health policy makers to develop adaptive strategies of urban landscape planning in response to climate changes.

Spatial interpolation is used to calculate the duration and intensity of extreme heat events, and further, the data was divided into sensitivity indicators to assess the vulnerable population and the adaptive capacity indicators to evaluate the extent to which the heat impact was reduced. Finally, we used the data of outpatients of heat-related diseases from the National Health Insurance Database to analyze the relationships between socio-economic factors and heat-related morbidity in Taipei Basin area.

We conclude that the outpatients of heat-related diseases had a significant positive correlation with the heat index in Taipei Basin area under extreme heat events. The spatial patterns of heat stress and heat-related morbidity in urban areas are very important information for urban planning and management under the threat of global climate change. We note that a gap exists between the results of vulnerability assessment and outpatients during heat events, vulnerability assessment has limitation for predicting morbidity of heat related disease. The gap reminds us to consider the differences of behaviors of residents suffering from heat stress and mortality data of heat related diseases could be helpful for our studies. Different from some prior studies, the indicators revealed in this study reflected the empirical risks of the outpatients of heat-related diseases during extreme heat events. The results of the study could be used to help modifying the urban development policies, and finally reached a just, healthy, security and sustainable society. In order to deal with the risks of extreme heat events, we suggested some improvements are necessary for the areas which were relatively lack of medical resources. There are several districts in high risks of heat stress needs the investments on warning and notification systems for extreme heat events.

DARDO Working waterlines a new ecological hydraulic inhabitable connection*

Michele Ugolini1, Stefania Varvaro2, Caterina Gallizioli3, Lavinia Dondi4

1PhD Associate professor, Politecnico di Milano, 20133, Italia, michele.ugolini@polimi.it;

2PhD Adjunct professor Politecnico di Milano, 20133, Italia, stefania.varvaro@polimi.it;

3PhD Adjunct professor Politecnico di Milano, 20133, Italia, caterina.gallizioli@polimi.it;

4PhD Adjunct professor Politecnico di Milano, 20133, Italia, laviniamaria.dondi@polimi.it;

Keywords: ecological connection #1; water#2; people #3

Introduction#

The presented work is a feasibility study for the design of a multifunctional, naturalistic, ecological, hydraulic, public usable connection and it was selected within a funding call of the Cariplo Foundation dedicated to the theme of the “ecological connections”. The proposal was selected and was developed in close collaboration between the Consorzio di Bonifica Est Ticino Villoresi, an important institution for the irrigation management of the water system of Lombardy (navigli) and Politecnico di Milano, in particular a research group of the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies. The occasion arose to solve the need of water in the south areas of Milan, essential to maintain its agricultural vocation. The main purpose was designing a large portion of the territory through the water, drawing a 21 km long DARDO Canal between the Villoresi and the Naviglio Grande ones, outlining also a new ecological corridor with a variable average section of 300 meters, where we developed, in addition to a hydraulic connection, a connection for the public fruition that innervates the territory by gathering its broad potential. The Naviglio Grande, the oldest of the great Navigli system and, since the Middle Ages, source of the agricultural and commercial wealth of Milan and its territory, still maintains a fundamental irrigation character. Through the time, in the long flow of its waters from Ticino to the heart of Milan, it acquired, however, an important ecological and environmental value as well as a public one, linked to leisure and tourism to discover the landscape features of the periurban agroforestry system. The Villoresi Canal, conceived by Eng. Eugenio Villoresi and completed at the end of the nineteenth century, is the last of the great Navigli system. It was built essentially for irrigation purposes and it is still today the backbone for the irrigation of the agricultural land in the north of Milan. With its 86 km, it runs in the west-east direction, coming from the Ticino waters (Panperduto dam) and reaching up to the Adda river, flanked by a cycle path that connects transversely the system of the Lombardia river-parks and making the canal, as well as a powerful hydraulic infrastructure, also a precious ecological and environmental connection, a landascape way, framing in the green V’Arco Villoresi system.¹

Aims #

The primary aim was to confirm the multifunctional nature of the connection in all design choices. More specifically, we tried:

1. to strengthen the system of Regional ecological connections between the territories located to the north-west of the city of Milano and those to the south-west;

2. to counteract the strong consumption of soil in environmentally prized but already infrastructured areas located in the west part of Milano;

3. to support the important agricultural vocation of the south territories of Milano, giving a sufficient quantity of water;

4. to link the important and crowded cycle paths of the Villoresi Canal and of the Naviglio Grande (green-blue ring) and to extend the network of local routes in a north-south direction;

5. to connect the Eurovelo 5 route (London-Brindisi) to the west of Milan with the Vento Eurovelo 8 (Cadiz-Athens) route: from Como to the Villoresi Canal and from the Naviglio Grande up to the Naviglio Pavese and the Po river.

Materials and methods #

To design a multifunctional connection it was methodologically opportune and necessary to set up a multidisciplinary working group composed of a naturalist, an environmental engineer, a hydraulic engineering studio and a group of architects working in the field of open spaces, landscape and architectural design of the built environment. The project lays the foundations on a careful analysis of the territory obtained through the study of the actual planning instruments, from the regional to the municipal scale, for the protection and preservation of the landscape and its specific characteristics, in addiction to the existing projects working on the same area. The analysis of the planning tools was accompanied by a precise and direct survey in situ that allowed us to verify the wide territory covered by the new ecological corridor within which to implement the new naturalization elements, to trace the line of the water of the new canal and set a different using condition.

From the analysis, therefore, the project was founded on a

The Catasto Teresiano of the ten municipalities involved in the new multifunctional connection: assembly

multidimensional attention: from a scale of 1: 250.000 with which a territorial vision was defined, to the 1:50 scale with which architectural elements were drawn, as the section of DARDO canal designed according to its multi-functionality.

Along the path, moreover, ten specific areas have been identified, they are characterized by particular strengths or weaknesses, to which an in-depth project has been dedicated.

The interaction and participation with the various territorial, associative and institutional subjects was programmatically researched; they have been called to have a role of observers and proponents of useful orientations for the development of the project.

The section of the new water line as a synthesis of the disciplines involved in its design in relation to the peri-urban landscape context, explicitly defines the DARDO as an ecological hydraulic and livable connection

DARDO as an ecological and naturalistic connection

The studied territory, despite being an intensely built place, is dotted with important naturalistic areas: the SIC Bosco di Cusago, the SIC Fontanile Nuovo, the SIC Bosco di Vanzago, Parco Agricolo Sud and the PLIS del Roccolo. These protected areas represent a series of environments with different characteristics and they are able to support and attract various animal species (permanent, migratory, nesting). The implementation of effective ecological networks takes place through the reconstruction of multifunctional green infrastructures associated with agricultural areas.

The project defines a wide and long ecological corridor - DARDO - that runs on one of the main path of the Ecological Regional Network. Inside this corridor the buffer of the project is pinpointed with an average width of 300 meters (lenght 21,5 km) to favorite the reconstruction or the permanence of environmental unities. Hedges and rows - linear elements of vegetation - together with masses and wooded strips are an outstanding presence in the agroecosystem.

As well as constituting a path for animals that shun open spaces, they also are shelter systems for organisms moving through the surrounding matrix, represented by cultivated fields. The narrow corridors are frequented, above all, by the typical species of open spaces or margin, while wide hedges can host the species most closely related to shady environments, and in general, a richer and more complex living community.

In the project buffer, defragmentation interventions, such as underground passages and elements of mitigation for the fauna, concretize the continuity of the green in the presence of transversal infrastructures. The conformation of the wetlands and of the introduced basins includes banks with gentle slopes and steps of different depth easily colonized by wild flora and fauna. These habitats favor the reproduction of the amphibians and are suitable for nesting and feeding of the flora and fauna.

The DARDO project buffer is associated with a section profile canal that fulfills all the three connections within itself: the ecological-naturalistic, hydraulic, public-usable ones. The section proposes, along the entire length of the canal, also in correspondence with new bridges, two shrub bands of ecological continuity drawn by different widths and a permanent band of ecological continuity for fish characterized by a savanella as a smaller riverbed during the winter months. Here some stones are placed to constitute elements of slowing down the current and they allow shelter for the fish. The higher jumps, which characterize the course of the canal, are designed equipped with ascent stairs also designed for fish. All the new bridges along the secondary roads, farm routes and pedestrian/cycle lane are equipped with animal passages to ensure ecological continuity in the east-west direction.

DARDO as a hydraulic connection

Starting from the water, as an extraordinary irrigation resource necessary to give fertility and life to the land, the DARDO Canal promotes the protection of the environment and natural habitats, against the consumption of soil and enhancing the touristic and local routes.

The study has among its aims the one of solving the needs (greater than what is now available) of the agricultural sector, which has always been one of the leading sectors of the economy of the Lombardy plain, through which significant historical places have been preserved together with an ancient architectural and agricultural practices that tell the traditions of territories and their typical products. The lowering of the groundwater level is due to the urbanization processes that have led to a high drainage of water and to the construction of the Northwestern Scolmatore Canal (C.S.N.O.). This caused a drying process of the spring (fontanili) that historically gave an important contribution of water to the system. The design hypothesis provides a path that alternates a section over and down the level of the ground and runs basically on the traces of the existing canals.

At its starting point the DARDO Canal derives 18 mc/s from the Villoresi Canal to distribute 10 mc/s along the way, 8 of which to irrigate the crossed territories and the remaining 2 to be allocated to the springs depleted from the CSNO construction. The additional 8 mc/s are destined to the Naviglio Grande and therefore to compensate for the deficits of the areas of the south of Milano. The level difference along the route (approximately 21.5 km) is around 57 m in height. In the meantime, an average slope of 0.5/1000 has been assumed to avoid the erosive impacts of water and 24 falling-waters have been inserted (over 47 m total) which offer important perceptions and interesting points of views of the canal as well as allowing the possibility of a hydroelectric use with the correct environmental insertion of three mini-power plants. The design of the hydraulic section is characterized by a trapezoidal geometry with a lowering portion as an ecological line (savanella). The floor is made of stone slabs and it is possible to walk on the sides of the savanella during the dried periods in the winter season. The overall section of the canal is completed with lateral embankments higher than the hydraulic needs to allow the insertion of two ecological shrubs zones characterized by different dimensions.

DARDO as a connection for the public fruition

The design of the pedestrian and cycle path follows the north-south direction, connecting the cycle path of the Villoresi Canal and the one of the Naviglio Grande, running on the canal embankments in order to take a look at the landscape from an upper position. The aim is reading the existing context by recovering the system of the rural routes alongside the rows and the wooded strips, the irrigation canals and the other traces of the territory. Not paved roads, farm routes and trails are the first references for the new DARDO path, away from busy roads. Transversally, in the east-west direction, the goal is to connect the system of local services, productive farms, historical sites and cultural heritage of the surrounding areas.

Cycling and walking means at the same time leisure and relax but also sport, health and tourism. It means flexibility in daily journeys favored by the flat context and by the intermodal exchange train-bicycle with three railways stations: one located at the beginning of the path (in Parabiago), one at the end (in Gaggiano) and one almost in the middle of the path (in Pregnana Milanese). The continuity and safety of the route are guaranteed by passing roads and railways through dedicated underpasses along the canal. Sustainability and comfort is ensured by a permeable pavement, suitable for agricultural and natural settings.

The DARDO is a local and international path, placing itself within the Eurovelo European routes (No. 5 and No. 8), enhancing the bicycle as a form of sustainable tourism, supported by a system of bike friendly services. The Consorzio Est Ticino Villoresi building placed in Parabiago is conceived as a hub-connection point between the DARDO route and the one that runs along the Villoresi Canal for 86 km, the railway station and the connection with Eurovelo n. 5. The hydraulic building become a water educational museum, a hostel for cyclists, parking and bike rental, as well as a market of local and biologic products.

The water basins, together with the jumps of the bottom canal, become special occasions to qualify the landscape organizing places to stay and to relax. In particular, the basins, as well as the hydraulic interventions, are the occasion of naturalistic interventions, as the planting of riparian species, or the occasion to built small pavilions and pergolas related to leisure and sport. The basin proposed alongside the Naviglio Grande is a new small dock for boats that sail along the canal itself.

The landscape is characterized by a rich cultivated countryside, particularly in the northern part and by masses and wooded bands that rhythm the space, define green rooms or open the view on the depth and far horizon, marked by high bell towers. In the southern part the wooded masses thin out and the views become wider, to the weaving of the cultivated land marked by the presence of the spring and canals flanked by a rich vegetation.

Conclusions#

Multifunctionality, interdisciplinary and transcalarity are the keys to understand the whole project. The ecological-naturalistic, hydraulic and public fruition aspects do not attribute a specialized value to the new waterway. The Dardo frees itself from the usefulness of serving water (where there isn’t) to become a place to live. In designing the three features on a large scale of the territory, as well as on the small, detail scale DARDO becomes a welcoming space for the people and a space for a virtuous interaction between flora and fauna.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to arch. Francesco Occhiuto who has worked with us in the relationship between all the components of the group.

Team group

Environmental scientist Manuela Vailati

Enviromental ingeneer Fabio Taglioretti

Hydraulic ingeneer Alessandra Frongia

Hydraulic ingeneers Altene workshop

Landascape and opens spaces – architects Politecnico di Milano

Michele Ugolini (scientific supervisor) , Stefania Varvaro, Caterina Gallizioli, Lavinia Dondi

main institution

Consorzio di Bonifica Est Ticino Villoresi

R.U.P.

first phase | dott. Massimo Lazzarini

second phase | ing. Mario Fossati

partner

Politecnico di Milano

Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani – DAStU

collaborators

Erica Dallasta

Filippo Ganassini

specific projects

>RFI/Italferr, Potenziamento della linea Rho-Arona. Tratta Rho-Gallarate. Nuova derivazione dal canale Villoresi, 2009.

> Expo 2015, Le Vie d’Acqua, 2013/2016.

> Anello Verde Azzurro, 2013/2016.

> V’arco Villoresi, 2012/2016.

data/archiv

> Dati geografici Geoportale Regione Lombardia.

planning

> PTR Regione Lombardia, 2009.

> PTRA Navigli Lombardi, 2010.

> PTCP della Provincia di Milano, 2014.

> PGT del Comune di Parabiago, 2012.

> PGT del Comune di Nerviano, 2010.

> PGT del Comune di Vanzago, 2012.

> PGT del Comune di Pogliano Milanese, 2013.

> PGT del Comune di Pregnana Milanese, 2016.

> PGT del Comune di Arluno, 2012.

> PGT del Comune di Vittuone, 2010.

> PGT del Comune di Sedriano, 2015.

> PGT del Comune di Bareggio, 2010.

> PGT del Comune di Cisliano, 2014.

> PGT del Comune di Cusago, 2011.

> PGT del Comune di Gaggiano, 2009.

> PGT del Trezzano sul Naviglio, 2014.

1 As stated and shared within the Agreement signed on June 14, 2012 by Consorzio Est Ticino Villoresi and Regione Lombardia D.G. Agriculture, together with Expo 2015 Society, 5 Provinces, 5 Regional Parks and 11 local Parks of over-municipal interest.