Land Consumption Versus Urban Regeneration

Abstract

Soil consumption refers to the decrease of fertile soil, naturalness, occupation of agricultural space for extra-agricultural uses, for urban diffusion, for the expansion of the urban footprint, for landscape contamination, for the loss of quality and beauty. The Environmental Terminology and Discovery Service (ETDS) of the European Environment Agency identifies unambiguous definitions of the concepts and indicators inherent to the consumption of the soil, in particular: Land Use, Land Cover, Landscape Fragmentation, Soil Sealing, Urban Sprawl and Land Take. The interpretative possibilities and the consequent effects on the physical planning choices of the territory are neither trivial nor discounted. Information sources are essential for monitoring the consumption of land, recording its evolution over time and space. About 50% of the world population lives in the cities, in Europe this percentage rises to 80% at least. Almost 70% of harmful emissions is caused by the cities even though the urbanized areas occupy only 2% of the earth’s surface. According to the United Nations, within the 2030, 59% of the world population will be concentrated in urban areas (Global Report on Human Settlements 2011). For these reasons, the battle for a sustainable development takes place in the cities and especially in the areas of urban/metropolitan suburbs and urban sprawl. There are two categories of interventions to counteract these effects: compensation actions to mitigate the effects and preventive measures to tackle the causes. Both represent the aims of urban planning. In order to contribute to the debate on the formalization of new eco-planning techniques, the paper offers an interpretive reading of the environmental sustainability criteria applicable to urban planning. The revision of the classical economistic finalization of the dynamics of transformation requires the search for new settlement patterns. The city itself extends more and more into the territory even if it changes the concept of the traditional city: changes new cities with a proper integration between the new and the existing one.