Proposte operative di abitabilità di una campagna urbana viste in una prospettiva meridiana

The landscape is rapidly becoming the focus of a wider issue that demands reflection upon the way we build territories and society. It represents a spatial, cultural and social entity that a society concerned with its own well being must address, endeavouring to lay the foundations for a better living context than the present one, by inventing new eco-symbolic horizons. Starting from some of the reflections currently being made in Italy, and in other European nations, the present work aims to concentrate on the opportunities for working on the landscape concept and its widening fields of specific interests. The strong bearing of these is illustrated by the ongoing debate on the application of the principles of the European Agreement on Landscape and by the lively discussion devoted by the research world to this topic. The core of the many issues that emerge can ultimately be summarily described as the extension of the spheres of landscape interest to embrace the entire territory, “normalizing” the landscape dimension within the ordinary urban and landscape planning procedures, and thus marking the onset of a more mature phase of application of the Florence Agreement. The context of cultural reference is that of the urban countryside, considered as a possible source of open spaces and a public asset for the city and its citizens. The reference is also to the debate that the École Nationale Superieure du Paysage of Versailles has long been conducting, and which has proven to be a particularly fertile terrain for interpreting and planning periurban agricultural landscapes in some southern Italian contexts, and indeed in Mediterranean contexts in general.