The role of green areas in the City of Matera (Southern Italy) as a recreational and tourist potential for its territory

The growth of population living in city centers, brings with it the need to make people's lives healthier, intervening in urban and peri-urban areas to increase the presence of green spaces, able to control air pollution levels, maintain biodiversity and improve the city's microclimate. The evaporation produced by plants also mitigate the heat peaks of the summer season, while the shading of buildings allows significant savings on energy for air conditioning. The Italian city with the highest amount of green per capita is Matera. This city has indeed around 59 million square meters of historical green areas: parks, villas and gardens with an historical value. In the present paper, it is presented the Green Plan for the Municipality of Matera, designed and implemented as an essential strategic tool to know, enhance, protect and design the green of the city as a system, taking into account the identity of places. The Census of the area, with the support of a GIS tool, covers the entire public green heritage: location of green areas, recognition of botanical species present, detection of the characteristics of the public tree, shrub heritage and the description of the characteristics and forms of use of different areas.