Attilia Peano

Landscape indicators : assessing and monitoring landscape quality

Foreword.- 1. Landscape Assessment and Monitoring.- 2. Indicators Assessment Systems.- 3. Indicators Used for Landscape.- 4. Landscape Assessment: the Ecological Profile.- 5. Indicators for the Assessment of Historic Landscape Features.- 6. Measuring Visual and Social Perceptions.- 7. Land Use Indicators for Landscape Assessment.- 8. Assessing the Economic Aspects of Landscape.- 9. Proposal for a Set of Indicators.- List of abbreviations.- Index.

Proposal for a Set of Indicators

The indicators proposed in the previous chapters for each profile of interpretation are selected and regrouped, to obtain two complete sets which, on a regional and local scale , can be used to assess landscape transformation. The indicators are selected with reference to a case study and the applicability of the indicators chosen is verified in a summary table with the necessary technical stages.

Nature Policies and Landscape Policies

The book focuses on the relationship between nature conservation policies and landscape policies. This is a relevant subject due to the current need of reviving nature conservation policies, which are today affected by a general effectiveness deficiency. To this end, landscape policies can play a crucial role, bridging nature and culture, fostering more integrated approaches to nature conservation and stimulating the active participation of local communities. The book gathers reflections, researches and experiences developed on an international level on this subject by experts coming from different international contexts (Europe, U.S.A.), various disciplinary backgrounds (geographers, planners, biologists, historians, jurists, economists, etc.) and several institutional bodies (Universities, administrative bodies, international organizations such as IUCN, EUROPARC Federation, UNESCO, etc.). The overall reflections gathered in the book - which is divided in three main sections: regulations and institutional frameworks, policies, actions and tools - combine to suggest innovative visions about the relationships between nature policies and landscape policies.

Torino, ieri, oggi, domani : una visione di sintesi

This paper is intended to do a comparative analysis of the urban growth of Turin, both those pragmatically focused on the future of the city and those critically and dangerously unable to be a strong guide for the transformation of the city. The paper talks about Turin as being the capital of the Reign of Italy, when urban plans changed the exterior of the city and defined the economical basis of Turin for centuries; then it focuses on Turin as an industrial city, strictly of car making. Secondarily, the paper discusses the decline of the industrial sector, which caused the decline of the city and its energy. Thanks to the Olympic Games, the city had an occasion of renewal, provided it is able to take advantage of the economical and financial resources that every city carries as a result of the Olympic Games. Is the renewal plan for Turin able to change the perspectives of the city’s decline? Most planned changes are punctual, isolated and are disjointed, so we can say that these changes are difficult to rescue the city from its decline, and are probably unable to improve the city over the long-term and to guide it through the post-industrial era, as many other cities did.

Landscape Assessment and Monitoring

What is the purpose of landscape indicators? Can we “measure” the quality of landscape? And if landscape as a whole is impossible to assess from a holistic point of view, can we break it down into simpler elements to analyse and monitor? These questions are becoming more and more pressing, as a result of two concomitant movements: the development of landscape policies, encouraged by public opinion, and the spread of the culture of assessment in all fields of public policies and in particular in territorial government. In Europe, these dynamics are well represented by two international regulations: the European Landscape Convention (CoE 2000) and the Strategic Environmental Assessment Directive (2001/42/EC), regulating any plan or programme affecting the environment. The European Structural Funds, and in particular EEC Agricultural policy are also subject to intense activity of assessment and monitoring , in relation to the environment and landscape (cf. the Common Monitoring Evaluation Framework ). This volume is dedicated to indicators that can be used to monitor policies, plans and programmes that have an impact on landscape, with particular focus on town planning schemes, territorial and landscape plans, which have a more direct effect on land use.

Un manifesto per il paesaggio rurale

he landscape plays an important role in order to promote the multisectorial and multifunctional rural development. In this perspective, a research in the Province of Turin territory has developed. It uses an interpretative matrix composed of four analysis approaches: geographic and social-economic, historical, ecological and territorial. Each approach highlights the strengthens and weaknesses aspects in order to promote policy of rural development founded on the valorisation of the landscape. From the analysis, it achieves guidelines to address the territorial planning, the conservation and the valorisation policies aimed at rural development. Those guidelines propose to share values and resources between city and rural territory, founded on a natural and social cohesion contract between city and agriculture, aimed at regulating the territorial system, acting on the visible landscape, habitable and liveable landscape. The Manifesto summarizes some principles in order to innovate the rural environment and to promote its development.