“The Rome Case Study. Strategies for green structure planning and maintenance”

On the occasion of COST C11 Meeting in Rome, a workshop and a technical visit were organized by the X Department “Environmental and Agricultural Policies” of the Municipality of Rome. The essay describes some of the strategies used by the Municipality for the planning and management of its huge “green” heritage and presented at that workshop by the responsibles of the department. One of the strategic choices is the individuation and protection of Rome’s ecological network, an articulated and functional system of areas with some naturalistic, agricultural and recreational importance. Speaking of the many battles fought to protect the open territory, it takes two outstanding examples: “Parco dell’Appia Antica” and “Villa Borghese”, that exemplify more or less the situation to be faced also in the other less famous cases. The difficulty in the defence of the historical and environmental heritage against the building speculation has characterized the protection and acquisition of the roman green assets. For the use of the land, inside the system of protected natural areas instituted by a regional law, various agreements with private people are foreseen. For the maintenance of the public areas, private investors are involved by the means of “Il progetto di finanza” (a finance plan). The new Master Plan indicates three strategic and structuring aspects: the environmental, the mobility and the dwelling systems, prioritising environmental regeneration and collective transport, reducing at the maximum new urban expansion and aiming at upgrading the existing city. The strategy for creating an environmental system is based on the integration of primary and secondary components, constituted by different types of green areas, and components of completion, concerning the elements that connect the two previous ones; these are to be implemented by the enhancement of watercourses, and their banks or shores, by cycle and pedestrian paths; the aim is to create a network crossing also the new developments, guaranteeing all the connections among the areas that form it, with the aim to maximize the ecological effects. The paper goes more in depth also on the landscape and urban development of the city, on its protected natural areas, on the environmental action plan and on the maintenance issue. Finally it describes the sites that have been visited: Parco Archeologico Centrale, Parco dell’Appia Antica, Parco della Caffarella, Villa Borghese, Villa Paganini, Punto verde qualità Via della Mendola.