Downscaling Regional Ecological Network and Landscape Resources to Develop Green Infrastructure at the City Scale. Insights from an Italian Case Study

Since the first Rio Summit held in 1992, sustainable development has been one of the most important driving forces for the future cities. To consolidate new sustainable growth models based on the management of natural resources, traditional spatial planning models are integrating with new ‘performance-based’ approaches that consider the provision of ecosystem services (ES) through green infrastructure (GI) as a possible way to improve the environmental performance and quality of life for citizens. Despite this, in Italy, the design and management of GI is still a part of the traditional land-use plan, where the development of urban green spaces at the city scale depends on the achievement of public green areas recognized by the Italian National Law. The paper shows the results of an experience conducted in the central part of Italy, in which the downscaling of landscape and ecological elements of value deriving from regional and provincial planning instruments in the local ecological network contributes to the integration of GI into land-use plans. Adopting the ecological network on a local scale helps select and build new urban and peri-urban green spaces (Italian ‘green standards’) necessary for the continuity of natural resources, which helps to build the GI and the supply of ES. It also represents the strategic framework for the development of the Green master plans at the city scale, a sectoral planning instrument to implement GI at the municipal scale, that will improve the quality of land-use plans.