Angioletta Voghera

Brief Introduction

Performance-based planning (PBP) is an approach to define a flexible, strategic and site-based sc...enario for the improvement of the social-ecological quality of the territory. The paper provides an experimentation of environmental compensation within the Italian context that can be traced back to the performance-based planning approach.

The topic of green infrastructure is becoming more and more popular within the academic world and... public bodies. In the face of climate change, it represents an urgent dilemma to be developed in both urban and landscape planning practices.

Territorial imbalances between catalysts of development and lagging areas are raising concerns in... the majority of European regions. The divide between main urban nodes and marginal territories poses serious development challenges. The polarization of social, economic and cultural opportunities in urban areas and the phenomena of ageing, depopulation and impoverishment of inner areas are often the result of place-neutral, spatially-blind approaches to development, and constitute a hurdle towards the European objective of social, economic and territorial cohesion.

Today cities are particularly vulnerable to any kind of pressures. The increase in urban complexity requires a better understanding of physical urbanization, and parallelly a shift in how cities are linked to environmental dynamics. Tackling the urban complexity requires a socio-ecological system-view where cities appear living and dynamic systems, whose processes and structures are interacting over time at morphological, ecological and socio-cultural levels.

According to the “evolutionary” approach (Davoudi & Al., 2012), urban resilience implies that urban systems have capacity to react to several external disturbances - economic, social, environmental - regarding all components of urban governance and transforming itself in a new development model.

Performance-based planning (PBP) is an approach to define a flexible, strategic and site-based scenario for the improvement of the social-ecological quality of the territory. The paper provides an experimentation of environmental compensation within the Italian context that can be traced back to the performance-based planning approach.

An effective biodiversity conservation in Protected Areas (PAs) requires that they are seen as part of larger ecosystems and that the ecological connectivity is maintained beyond PA administrative boundaries.

Territorial imbalances between catalysts of development and lagging areas are raising concerns in the majority of European regions. The divide between main urban nodes and marginal territories poses serious development challenges.