Abstract
Sustainability is a complex phenomenon that refers to economic, environmental, and social aspects. Any concept of sustainable urban development must incorporate sectoral concepts; these must be well integrated into the overarching urban, regional, and governance policies. One sectoral policy of great importance is the redevelopment processes of disused industrial areas into Sustainable Industrial Areas (AIS), Ecologically Equipped Productive Areas (APEA), or Eco-Industrial Parks (EIP). These territories, as socioeconomic systems that are being observed in the framework of the development of sustainability monitoring, are complex objects for evaluation due to the presence of a large number of interconnections between the constituent elements and hierarchical levels (sectors and spheres). For this reason, it is necessary that a new interpretation of economical, natural, and social phenomena, following a systemic and integrated approach, is able to reinterpret them for the dissemination of an ecologically and socially sustainable economy. The purpose of this work is to analyse the state of realisation of APEA on the Italian national territory, in order to understand the real benefits of production areas managed through eco-efficiency standards and to guarantee an integrated management system of environmental aspects. An additional aim is to consider a logical-mathematical model that would be able to support territorial policies in the identification of suitable areas to be converted into APEA, in order to promote sustainable development of the territory.
Highlights
The development of a territory, whether already highly urbanized and/or in a phase of progressive urban growth, tends to meet both the needs of the population and of private subjects
At the same time, the data show an average size of industrial areas in the South of 25% above the national average and 30% higher than that of the North, favouring the possibility of a progressive modification of industrial areas that could count on larger areas and be more interesting from the point of view of optimizing the processes involved, starting from the management of public services and energy supply and other production sources, production support services, and businesses [40]
It has been strongly spread within public opinion, in the last few decades, that human activities change the surrounding environment, creating air, water, and soil pollution and influencing the health of the population and its prospects of future development
Summary
The development of a territory, whether already highly urbanized and/or in a phase of progressive urban growth, tends to meet both the needs of the population and of private subjects To adequately satisfy these needs, the actions implemented in the territory have to produce multiple effects over time, such as significant change in the balance between the natural environmental system and the economic social system [1]. Within this scenario, there is a need to develop a new key to understanding of the phenomena that regulate territorial growth. This is important at both the international—for the global dimension of some phenomena—and at the regional and local regional scale, due to the urgency of identifying production and consumption models that can reconcile economic development with the protection of the natural environment into different sociocultural contexts. [5]
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