The green texture in metropolization processes. Related issues and transversal approaches

Abstract

The green texture, meaning with this meaning all those free and permeable green areas, which in various ways contribute to composing the design of the urban green, is a real complex system, formed by a set of natural surfaces and environmental structures, an asset of collective interest, a true multifunctional resource for the city and its inhabitants. The metropolisation processes of the last fifty years have produced indiscriminate land consumption phenomena, with the consequent loss of the environmental quality of metropolitan urban contexts. The disappearance of agricultural areas and the contiguous natural landscape has led to the loss of important resources for metropolitan areas, in the form of ecosystem services and the environmental quality of cities.
The paper explores the primary role of the green texture in the functioning of the city. The green plot, in all its components, in addition to being an added value to the quality of the places, is also a precious opportunity to outline in a precise and concrete way, a modern reinterpretation of the places themselves and the related services. It is therefore a set of factors that must influence the future goals of urban and territorial planning, for example by expanding the so-called green and blue infrastructures and, consequently, addressing the relationship between built and artificialized territory, both with the protection and enhancement of the naturalistic values diffused in the territory, both with ecosystem services and with an active conservation of biodiversity.