Corrado Diamantini

Planning the urban sustainable development The case of the plan for the province of Trento, Italy

This paper provides an overview of the initiatives for sustainable development taking place in Italy at the urban and provincial levels, stressing some limits they met: unsatisfactory knowledge of environmental conditions, use of too general indicators, modest public participation. The case of the plan for the Province of Trento, currently in progress, is examined. This experience applies an eco-systemic approach to analyze the interactions among the different resource use cycles. Moreover, it tends to overcome the drawbacks of the top-down approach typical of plans, by means of a structured public involvement. In the Province of Trento, a specific attention has to be devoted to the Alpine environment, which is endangered by the urban sprawl and the intensive use of resources. The plan will provide a deeper knowledge of environmental processes and will produce a set of appropriate indicators to assess the level of sustainability of the province, thus giving guidelines for improving policies and actions.

Understanding the urbanisation process in sub-Saharan Africa: the Mozambican rural towns

In the last few years, academic research and development programmes have underlined the important role of small towns in Sub-Saharan Africa in promoting the growth of the surrounding rural areas. However, identifying the nature of these urban centres and analysing the relevant effects of transformation they are going through are still unsolved issues. This paper aims to explore both aspects in considering as a case study Sena, a small town situated in rural Mozambique. Field research and direct survey results are used to highlight the peculiar characteristics of this rural town together with some negative effects brought about by radical transformation taking place here. Finally, the paper suggests some key topics to be considered within spatial planning in similar contexts.

Peri-urban agriculture as key driver to sustainability. A planning project in an Alpine city

BackgroundThere is a general agreement on the role that peri-urban agriculture can play in achieving sustainable cities. This role is particularly crucial in the Alps, which are now the scene of relevant changes, involving above all cities that are embracing metropolitan functions. These changes pose problems, first of which being the impairment of the particular relations between urban and natural processes that form the basis of not just the sustainability, but also the same identity, of the Alpine city. In fact, due to the development of processes that are highly anomalous in mountain territories, such as urban sprawl, Alpine cities run the risk of reproducing lowland urban development.MethodsThe article focuses on the way whereby the identifying traits of the Alpine city can be maintained, and not least its sustainability, pointing out that in the Alps peri-urban territories, which in many Alpine regions still present characteristics distinct from those of lowland city, can play a key role in the construction of the new urbanity suggested by the sustainable development paradigm.ResultsThe peri-urban territory north of Trento, the Rotaliana Königsberg, for which a planning project was drawn up that aims to return to this territory its agro-food vocation, constitutes an evidence of the effectiveness of such approach. Remarkable aspect of the project is in the creation of a vast agricultural park that encompasses almost all this urbanized territory.ConclusionsFinally, the conditions are summarized which allow to achieve similar results.