Federica Gobattoni

Energy Supply, Thermodynamics and Territorial Processes as a New Paradigm of Sustainability in Planning Science and Practice

The world’s population is growing constantly and, more importantly, the need for raw materials and food products is growing quickly, as a result of the western development model. The energy-consuming (energivorous) and consumerist nature of this model is being consolidated globally, ignoring both the issue of resource limitations, and the medium-long term environmental consequences (e.g. climate change, water pollution). This development model, in order to maintain its internal integrity and further develop (often at increasing rates of growth), needs to import energy and materials from the external environment and to produce waste and disorder (entropy) in an inexorable slide toward thermodynamic equilibrium. Sustainable development should focus on contrasting these processes as far as possible, and on developing suitable planning praxes. This paper aims to show how to achieve sustainable land-use through local resource evaluation, overturning the “linear” logic of acquisition-consumption-disposal of wastes, in search of circular processes, capable of reducing entropy growth in a social-ecological system. An analysis of the exergetic availabilities of the landscape mosaic demonstrates great potential for exploiting energy supplies from local and renewable sources, thus lessening the system’s overall impact on the global environment.

Sustainability And Planning. Thinking and Acting According to Thermodinamics Laws

The paper deals with environmental sustainability, in terms of intrinsic vulnerability and thermodynamics laws concepts, applied to urban green infrastructures. This approach gives also the track to build more resilient and complex landscapes. Integrating intrinsic vulnerability and thermodynamics laws concepts, an effective strategy could be conceived to face best management practices in planning more sustainable and healthy cities.

Bio-Energy Connectivity And Ecosystem Services. An Assessment by Pandora 3.0 Model for Land Use Decision Making

Landscape connectivity is one of the major issues related to biodiversity conservation and to the delivery of Ecosystem Services (ES). Several models were developed to assess landscape connectivity but lack of data and mismatching scale of analysis often represent insurmountable constraints for the correct evaluation and integration of ecological connectivity into plans and assessment procedures. In this paper a procedure for ES assessment related with Habitat and Bio-Energy Landscape Connectivity (BELC) is proposed. The method is based on the connectivity measure furnished by the last version of PANDORA model and uses a modified formulation of current ES evaluation. The implementation of the model in a real case has highlighted its potential multi-scale workability. The spatial approach of the model aims at furnishing a further tool for the spread of ES and landscape ecology concepts into procedures of assessment (e.g. EIA, SEA) and land use planning at different administrative scales.

Percezione e identità paesaggistica: un’opportunità di sviluppo per i territori rurali

In questo articolo si propone un percorso metodologico partecipato per la definizione di azioni di sviluppo e tutela di un territorio rurale relazionate ai valori identitari che la popolazione riconosce. Tale approccio bottom-up mira a stimolare il coinvolgimento della stessa popolazione e i decisori politici in una logica win-win tesa a valorizzare le risorse e i capitali naturali, sociali e umani del territorio. Il presente lavoro, attraverso un caso studio specifico, si propone quindi come una proposta metodologica per la salvaguardia dei paesaggi i cui caratteri rurali sono ancora riconosciuti dalla popolazione e la creazione di sistemi socio-ecologici piu resilienti ed adattativi.

Second law of thermodynamics and urban green infrastructure - A knowledge synthesis to address spatial planning strategies

Planning of ecosystem services provided by the Urban Green Infrastructure (UGI) is a key issue for urban sustainability. Planning strategies driven by the second law of thermodynamics (SLT) are innovative approaches to sustainability but they are still in seminal phase. In this article, a coupled review of SLT within spatial planning is accomplished looking at the main applications in urban green infrastructure (UGI) planning. The work has supported the definition of a preliminary low-entropy UGI planning strategy (Pelorosso, Gobattoni, & Leone, 2017) but it also aims to contribute to the improvement and/or development of even more solid planning strategies based on SLT. In particular, a systemic review of UGI planning and thermodynamics has been carried out to identify all the occurrences to date in the scientific literature. Secondly, a scoping review of SLT-related concepts of exergy, entropy and urban metabolism is presented in order to investigate the main applications of, and gaps in, urban spatial planning. Results indicate that UGI and ecosystem service planning based on SLT is a relatively new field of research. Moreover, some general indications are derived for the development of spatial UGI planning strategies based on SLT.

Reducing Urban Entropy Employing Nature-Based Solutions: The Case of Urban Storm Water Management

This paper presents the theory behind the concept of low-entropy cities based on the second law of thermodynamics. This concept aims to provide a bridge among different approaches on city sustainability studies, highlighting the links between natural processes and the socio-ecological complexity of urban systems. A practical low-entropy application is then proposed for urban storm water management, examining the planning of nature-based solutions with the support of a modelling approach. A further novelty of this work is the attempt to combine entropy with resilience assessment for urban green infrastructure planning.

Increasing Hydrological Resilience Employing Nature-Based Solutions: A Modelling Approach to Support Spatial Planning

Despite numerous studies on urban resilience, few practical applications of spatial explicit and quantitative resilience indicators in green infrastructure planning are present in literature. This paper presents a methodological framework to assess the hydrological resilience of an urban context employing modelling approach. The proposed resilience index is then used to support the definition of nature-based and engineered solutions aimed to increase resilience to floods as well as to enhance the green infrastructure multi-functionality in a densely populated district of Bari. The paper aims then to contribute to the introduction of resilience assessment and sustainable storm water management in practice urban planning in a context of climate adaptation plans.

The sustainability of the urban system from a hydrological point of view: a practice planning proposal

Environmental protection issues are often considered as a toll to be paid and not as a proactive development engine in urban planning. The issue of green areas needs to be re-interpreted as a real infrastructure, which is able to provide tangible benefits to the health and safety of citizens. These aspects represent fundamental issues of the applied research, which should explore methods and techniques able to provide the ecological concerns with the ability to operate efficiently. This paper aims to provide an answer to these questions focusing the attention on the greenery in the city and on one of its most important ecosystem services, which is mitigation of flooding events. The experimentation was carried out in an urban area, verifying, in quantitative terms, the role of the green, engineered with some SUDS, to mitigate the hydrological alteration that the urban development involves. Finally, two proposals have been presented to move from traditional planning based on normative standards to a more flexible, site-specific performance-based planning.