7. Landscape and Natural Resources: Green Infrastructure and Green Community Projects in the Umbrian Region

Within the principal resources useful for the next landscape models, natural elements represent a substantial structure ever more necessary for the sustainability of places. Landscape cannot be reduced to its picturesque aspects, because, in this case, it could become more an idea than a reality, disjoint from material issues. The case study of Umbria represents a paradigmatic example of a romantic vision of a territory, called “the Green Heart of Italy”. In the front of a strong natural example, the storytelling of landscape tries to communicate this idealistic model in a bucolic style, without a real strategy for nature and environment; those are aspects of the same landscape reality. The case studies presented here derive from an interdisciplinary reading within the ecological road, with the aim of rethinking landscape through conserving and valorizing biodiversity. Also, in the front of the economic crisis, this topic represents an opportunity to develop territories, according to EU directives. To create a smart landscape, “to do more with less,” it is necessary to start from conservation of natural capital, redrawing the green infrastructures, today fragmented, as in the two cases proposed about green peri-urban corridors in Corciano territory and the green corridor of the Tiber River. Both proposals are founded on integration of knowledge and approaches, where the cooperation between different territorial actors represents the flywheel to lead a territory through a synthesis between environment and climatic functions and landscape issues. The approach in the representation topic is central in the planning activities, in the field of connections of different issues and questions, and a place of simulation of the next landscape.