Territori Sostenibili

Among the various operational transcriptions of “Sustainability” into planning tools and urban policies, those based on “Time” are increasingly focusing on two main aspects: land use regulations and regeneration of renewable resources, which are supposed to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”; those based on “Space” are about the integration of the ecological principles into different organizations of settlement patterns. The first of the following papers is about the territorialisation of sustainability issues in some planning experiences in Europe and the USA over the last decade, while the second focuses its attention on the Metropolitan Area of Rome, recently settled by law (“Città Metropolitana”). Here “metropolisation”, as a working hypothesis awaiting a consistent control, is the backdrop for the research “Innovazione territoriale sostenibile” commissioned by the Compagnia di San Paolo and Unindustria to the Department of Urban Studies and Istituto di Ricerche economiche e sociali (IRES), by the way of the Centro Einaudi of Turin. Nowadays the condition of “urban fringe” involves largest portions of territory in which suburbs are melted with agricultural and natural landscapes, shifting the new governance to incorporate ecological principles within the domain of “Urban Form” to ensure landscape protection and the regeneration of environmental resources.