Sustainable planning: the urban bioregion

Abstract

With the term bioregion usually indicates the presence of inhabitants and the complexity of the relationships they create with the territory. Therefore we cannot take a reductionist attitude precisely in order to fully grasp the potential and the problems that they generate. With “bio” we do not intend to refer to organic production but to the presence of life in a broad sense on the territory. In view of this, an interdisciplinary approach is required that captures the complexity of the system aimed at overcoming the concept of an urban area that is too firm on personal services. The approach must be relational starting from the social relations between people and the relations of the inhabitants with the territory. Only a new form of plan will be able to generate a sustainable development process both from an environmental and socio-economic point of view and within the renewed urban planning tool ecosystem services find space in a new territorial dimension. Even today, interventions for the protection and enhancement of the landscape and the environment are very fragmented, isolated from each other and from the rest of the territory, effectively causing a degradation of ecosystem functionality. An effective and efficient process of sustainable development must be able to involve local communities in the management of their environmental heritage in such a way as to generate a widespread mentality of protection associated with zero land consumption behavior.