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Urban Planning and Coastal Landscape
Chiara Camaioni
PhD in Urban and Territorial Planning, Previously the Department of Design Architectural, Territorial, and Environmental Technology (DATA), now the Department of Planning Design and Architectural Technology (PDTA), Sapienza University of Rome.
KEYWORDS: hydro-geological risks, coastal landscape, local plan
ABSTRACT
The disastrous floods that have occurred in Europe in recent years have brought with them a rethinking of mitigation strategies for hydraulic and hydro-geological risks. The experience being carried forward in the new local plan in the City of Pineto in the territory of Città Adriatica (Italy) sees the possibility of recovering the capacity to project and govern the changes in the costal landscape through the specification of mitigation and adaptive strategies without such changes determining further loss of sense of place. In the case of Pineto, this means protecting a territory in which the evolution of agriculture, the claims of urban sprawl, and the perpetuation of sectorial risk mitigation intervention readily bring up the theme of protection from floods and overflowing of natural and artificial waterways. In this context, the new local plan develops a strategic vision and identifies operational solutions to regain rules for the organization of agricultural land and the historical landscape that once entrusted the role of “taming” nature to the construction of artificial canals, preserving houses and activities.
Climate changes that have occurred in Europe in recent years and the consequent impact on hydrogeological cycles and related phenomena have led to a general rethinking of the strate-gies and rules to mitigate/eliminate/prevent environmental risks and protect territories in order to protect the landscape. In Italy since 1996, more than 245 civil-protection ordinances have confronted hydrogeological risks. This clearly highlights how, beyond regulatory provi-sions, land conservation policies in the country have long been undervalued.
Faced with the effects of calamitous events, the need to spread a culture of territorial main-tenance has taken shape. The priority is the safety of communities and the need to fight ter-ritorial speculation, which demands a national plan for river and hillside maintenance. In ad-dition, awareness is growing that preventing damage and creating environmental resilience depend above all on urban planning, and that urban expansion should be limited since it exerts significant pressure on rural areas, thus destroying the landscape. As a consequence, there is growing awareness that land-consumption containment should be accompanied by two aspects. On the one hand, compensation policies should be activated in which those who make the land impermeable should be required either to re-establish the original state of the land before the intervention or to pay for the loss of the natural resources as well as social costs (loss of quality of life, of the landscape) and those related to health (increase in noise, dust emission, use of toxic substances, etc.). On the other hand, land consumption should be accompanied by the development of good rules to orient the transformations
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UNISCAPE En-Route - a. I - n. 2 - 2015rather than just imposing limits and restrictions. These changes are particularly necessary in fragile, compromised urban contexts, for example, the Adriatic coast, which has experi-enced excessive degradation of the landscape in a very short time. Urbanization began in 1860 with the establishment of the Adriatic railway along the coast and accelerated starting in the 1960s when large tracts of coastal urbanization along the main roads grew together, creating a single city with a linear structure that is strongly connected with the transverse inland valleys.
In this context, the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Camerino has been researching the Adriatic City for several years. Today, it acts as a scientific consultant in drafting the new GRP1 for the City of Pineto, a town of about 14,000 in the Province of Teramo in the Abruzzi Region. This coastal city, whose origin is connected to the construction of the Adriatic railway in 1863 and the realization, starting some decades before, of numerous summer residences (villas) for rich land holders in the area, has, since the 1950s, experienced significant settlement expansion connected to population growth and the development of manufacturing and tourism. From the end of the 1800s to 1930, the territory was character-ized by two aspects. First, significant agrarian reclamation activities were made to construct an artificial canal network to collect rainwater from the hill and irrigate the coastal agricul-tural areas. Second, the landscape was built through a system of pine groves along the sea and on the hill, from which the city takes its name, and which still today constitutes the major characteristic of the town.
After World War II, economic and social changes (population growth, settlement expansion, industrial development, etc.) triggered a process of hydrogeological instability and landscape and nature impoverishment that has become more evident over time. In particular, the in-crease in impermeable surfaces and the change in agricultural practices aimed at mechanized cultivation, the abandonment of maintaining the private water network (business and inter-business) still represent factors that determine the increase in flow rates carried by the ar-tificial canals and rivers, reducing the hydraulic security of agricultural areas and settlements.
The result is a territory with a notably reduced hydraulic security in which mitigation and ecological balance are absent, especially in areas with a significant presence of production and urban settlement.
As of today, the operational solutions adopted to reduce the risks have wound up ‘plastering’
the territory with increasingly invasive works (dams, canals, restraint walls, gabions), which have neither impeded nor prevented risks, nor contrasted land transformations, which are essentially due to urbanization and related phenomena.
The evidence of the situation described thus far lies in disastrous floods that have only in-creased in recent years.
The new local plan (GRP) offers the possibility to integrate in urban/territorial planning as-pects connected to managing environmental risks in matters of hydraulic and hydrogeologi-cal danger. Based on detailed studies of landslide risk for the coastal hills and the plain, the plan promotes planning visions, regulatory devices, and operational interventions, giving arti-ficial canals (recovered and new) the fundamental role of mending the urban and peri-urban
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coastal landscape and recovering the nexus between the landscape and the role of humans in structural transformations induced on the territory.
This specific content is included in the “Preliminary Planning Document” (DPP), which rep-resents the strategic phase of the process to construct the new plan, which is subject to a participation phase with citizens and stakeholders. This document mainly interprets the distinctive aspects of the territory and identifies the main problems related to the landscape and environment.
The methodological path established in the DPP is characterized by several basic steps:
- creation of a knowledge framework;
- interpretation of the knowledge framework;
- identification of problems and important issues related to the landscape, the environment, and mobility;
- creation of the idea of the city and development of a model for the local plan that objec-tives, actions, and interventions can be based on;
- development of the structural and strategic content of the “preliminary scheme” and specification of the “strategic projects”;
- identification of tools, rules, and guidelines to build and manage the city and the landscape;
- inviting the local population and stakeholders to participate.
The knowledge and interpretational framework show that we are facing a coastal territory characterized by a linear, continuous settlement that develops along the main roads and becomes fragmented and sparse near agricultural areas, leaving large environmental and land-scape gaps, which are necessary to ensure the efficiency of natural cycles and connections between different environments (sea-hill, hill-river areas). In spite of this, criticalities that depend on natural and anthropic causes are clearly evident.
Problems related to nature regard: the flood areas along the main river ways and the coastal plain; hydrogeologically sensitive coastal hill areas; coastal erosion; and the deterioration of vegetation relative to the coastal and hillside pine stands. Problems due to anthropization re-late to: natural and artificial water ways, especially near the coastal plain; discontinuities in the ecological network due to settlement and infrastructure pressure; deterioration of vegetation in green public areas and parks in the historical areas; and modifications of the flora, fauna, and dune environments due to excessive human presence.
The preliminary scheme of the new plan develops an idea of the city to promote an image of tourism, sustainable development, territorial protection, and urban quality by identifying a series of strategic actions and projects.
The technical construction phase of the new GRP, which will follow the DPP and the par-ticipatory phase, will also include the physical/functional conditions necessary to create the new proposed development model by identifying the means of implementation and management (Fig. 1).
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UNISCAPE En-Route - a. I - n. 2 - 2015The new development model established in the preliminary scheme (Figure 1), published as
“Pineto: Quality City”, sets out:
- the recovery/restoration of the east-west (sea-hill) environmental and ecological con-nections;
- reconnection of the different parts of the territory through a capillary system of green infrastructures;
- recovery of the capacity to plan and manage landscape changes, with particular attention to green tourism;
- rethinking the form and quality of public spaces.
In addition, the preliminary scheme, whose contents will inform the subsequent technical construction of the local plan as well as the prescriptive regulatory content, also promotes the strategic actions listed below.
Hydraulic conservation interventions: the new plan pursues hydraulic protection in the territory in light of risks seen following March flooding through:
- flood plains at the foot of the hills, new open canals, water collectors crossing infrastruc-tures;
- enlargement of the end of the canals to ensure their efficiency;
- manuals for good agricultural practices.
Fig. 1: GRP – Preliminary Scheme
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Interventions to create and reinforce the ecological network: the primary objective is to construct the ecological network. This plays a dual role of improving and restoring the ecological func-tion of the territory and to morphologically structure the settlement. The plan pursues this objective through a systematic combination of interventions for:
- recovery of natural and anthropic vegetation and water quality;
- continuity of the ecological network (sea-hill green wedges, coastal and hill pine forests);
- river parks with urban and regional significance (Vomano park, Calvano park, Formale Ponno linear park);
- tree-lined avenues in the city and green areas to mitigate the impact of the infrastructure and to connect north-south and east-west areas with cycle and pedestrian lanes;
- the morphological definition of the settlement and recovery of the historic rule for the development of the city.
- Interventions for the landscape restoration of the city in form and containing land con-sumption that are promoted by the preliminary scheme through:
- the morphological definition of the boundaries between settled areas and rural areas;
- improvement of existing urban margins through mitigation landscaping and compensa-tional interventions;
- settlement containment through urban completion rather than new expansion;
- maintenance and integration of open spaces within the settlement.
At the end of the research, several planning scenarios were proposed that organize the sys-tem of strategies, actions, and interventions set out by the plan, using meta-planning explora-tions as well. These scenarios, called “strategic projects”, aim to favour an integrated approach to construct specific parts of the city and territory. They entail unitary planning definitions and relate to components of the ecological network and the settlement system. Each project identifies the main policies and interventions that should be implemented to reach the objec-tives of the local plan.
Below we present the salient points of some strategic projects, selecting those that are deemed most useful to the nature of the discourse.
The strategic project “For Eco-Compatible Tourism” (Fig. 2). This strategic project studies a wide plain area that extends between the sea and first coastal hills. It also includes areas that are currently occupied by artisan and commercial settlements. The goals established by the DPP relate to: securing the territory, protecting and enhancing existing east-west environ-mental crossings; environenviron-mental enhancement and the collective use of the broad agricul-tural space on the sea with the establishment of an agriculagricul-tural/nature park, also equipped for sports and free time; the environmental and functional restoration of production areas through new uses (commerce, direction, tourism); the qualification of open spaces, with the aim of restoring settlements according to criteria of integration with the landscape and intro-ducing quality elements in green spaces and innovative energy-production systems.
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UNISCAPE En-Route - a. I - n. 2 - 2015Another strategic project is “North Gate” (Fig. 3). This project deals with substantially free areas of the coastal plain, which are found near the centre of Pineto close to the tourist zone.
The proposed idea of the city includes: securing the territory and restoring its environmental and ecological balance by regimenting water from the hills by constructing a new north-south canal parallel to the “formale Ponno” artifical canal and new artificial canals; the recovery of existing canals; establishment of east-west and north-south corridors of environmental con-tinuity; a linear urban park along the old and new “formale Ponno” and a greenway between Pineto and Scerne as an alternative to ordinary roads and services to the settlements and the new educational complex; completing the Villa Fumosa settlement system by creating a green belt and reconverting the incompatible production activities that are present.
In conclusion, faced with the lack of success in policies for territorial infrastructures to con-tain the hydrogeological risk and the growing awareness of environmental and landscape defence, the opportunity/need arises that environmental risks be defined beyond the sense of protection in order to include them within planning and “landscape creation” actions. On the one hand, this circumstance imposes the modification and renewal of the traditional ur-ban and territorial plans in a search for greater synergy between protecting environmental values and discipline of the transformations. On the other hand, it entails a capacity for
syn-Fig. 2: Strategic project ”For Eco-Compatible Tourism”
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thesis that, faced with the administrative stratification including multiple levels of protection and multiple government tools, recognizes a really responsible subject in the compatibility between environmental protection and territorial use, and therefore between norms and ac-tions. This second option implies institutional collaboration and collaboration between insti-tutions and citizens based on the compatibility between public and private interests. The case study examined draws upon this condition and its possible organization and experimentation.
The drafting of the new local plan has faced different aspects that are often incongruent if not directly in conflict, such as: hydrogeological security, reinforcing the ecological network, the quality of life in the city, and the renewal of the coastal landscape, containing land consump-tion and redefining the urban form, recovery of the nexus between landscape, and the role of humans in the structural transformations induced on the territory.
The proposed model requires recourse to investigation methods and rather innovative tech-nical solutions such as restoring balance to urban planning and environmental compensation, as well as the recovery of good practices that have been forgotten over time, especially in agriculture. The aim is twofold. On the one hand, it favours a participatory attitude that lays the basis to grow a new social demand based on the awareness of environmental rights and duties and the knowledge of risks. On the other hand, it researches the series of conflicts that are inevitably generated when intervening to guide transformations in sensitive areas, which are however characterized by settlement developments and important economics.
Fig. 3: Strategic project “Porta Nord”
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UNISCAPE En-Route - a. I - n. 2 - 2015In fact, in these circumstances, strategies for territorial defence and protection should be measured effectively with the expectations, needs, and rights of citizens, pursuing the idea of environmental sustainability that in no way can be distinguished from social, economic, and cultural sustainability.
Notes
1 The General Regulatory Plan (GRP) is the tool in Italian legislation that regulates building in the municipal territory.
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