Good practice:

Methods and tools for developing a sustainable landscape plan for the metropolitan area

The current challenges posed by climate change and the socio-economic crisis demand new planning approaches.The loss of soil and the problems deriving from the loss of ecological functions and the degradation of water cycles are increasing the vulnerability of territory. Within the scope of LOS_DAMA! project, Piedmonte region developed a pilot aimed to integrate the landscape dimension, ecosystem services (ES), green and blue infrastructure (GBI) and nature-based solutions (NBS) into planning policies. Reducing vulnerability and improving resilience is the ultimate aim. This is achieved through the development of a participatory plan integrating ES and GBI. In this process, ES play a dual role: as a tool to understand the features, the vulnerability of the landscape units (LU) and their role within the overall landscape mosaic; as a tool to orient the plan, highlighting those related ES capable of reducing vulnerability.
The participatory process was aimed at developing a multiscale governance tool for the municipalities of the Stura di Lanzo river basin, involving public and private stakeholders. The main beneficiaries of this project are the municipal administrations.
The output of the project is a strategic plan oriented at solving or mitigating the current issues, through encouraging and implementing effective sustainability practices, based on GBI. A flexible plan “to do well”, based on the local development of GBI, and of a new Governance model.

The total amount of the LOS_DAMA! project, that involved 8 partners, 22 Observer and 7 case study area, was of 2.598.520 EUR. Resources allocated from Piemonte Region to develop the activities linked to this good practice were 74.500 euros.

The success factors of this good practice concerns: the multi-scale approach allows interaction between different levels of public actors; the implementation of the actions proposed by the planning scheme increase the cooperation between public and private actors; the participatory process improve the knowledge of the local landscape; the project implementation provided an opportunity to test technical tools such as the water map and the spatial indicators.

The main challenges was the participatory path as well as trying to change the approach to governance by moving from zooning to strategic planning of blue and green infracture linked to economic resources.

The climate, social, environmental and economic changes present new challenges for territorial governance. We need flexible tools, built on resources, needs and their ability to adapt to change. The tools developed with the LOS_DAMA! project they can be a planning response to the major challenges of true sustainability.
The multiscalar approach proposed to integrate the landscape dimension, ecosystem services (ES), green and blue infrastructure (GBI) and nature-based solutions (NBS) into planning policies can easily be adapted to planning systems outside the Italian context experimented in the pilot .The effectiveness of the method relies on the identification of landscape diversities and vulnerabilities and the ES that need to be provided in new GBI plans.
At the moment Piedmont Region is working to implement the methodology in a large area planning experimentation involving 7 municipalities of the metropolitan area, with the aim of modifying the regional law governing the territory