Periurban Areas in the Design of Supra-Municipal Strategies for Urban Green Infrastructures

Abstract

Nowadays, an increasing number of large cities, districts, and towns have tools for the Planning and Management of Green Infrastructures. All such tools seek a progression towards a future city model that is more resilient on an environmental, economic, and social level. To achieve this, emphasis is placed on the creation of a green infrastructure and, particularly, on improving urban biodiversity, urban forests, the value of natural areas in the urban environment, periurban agriculture, ecological connectivity, and accessibility. Moreover, the recent COVID19 health crisis has further highlighted that the city dweller’s relationship with the environment requires a reconciliation with nature and rural life that goes beyond typical compartmentalization. The objective must be to emphasize the need to establish creative processes which, through micro-scale activities (landscaping), generate the articulation of visible actions on a territorial scale (landscape planning) in both the natural environment (environmental landscape planning) and the urban environment (town planning based on the landscape). This article analyzes the issue of the large towns in south-west Madrid, where there is a dramatic divide on the border between the city landscape and the surrounding natural or agricultural landscape, and where there is an increasing need to establish landscapes with a certain uniqueness and to classify them as protected periurban areas, nature reserves, or land for which use and management is regulated. It is therefore important to develop environmental quality standards to assess Green Infrastructures as a whole: the administrative processes, their design, construction, maintenance, and resilience. This research focuses upon how this change in the planning and management of green periurban areas improves the multifunctionality of periurban spaces along with the intrinsic quality of the landscape, and promotes the city’s sustainability and resilience and improves governance. From the conclusions drawn, it should be noted that analysis, design, and action should be built on premises of sustainability and multifunctionality, and comply with the criteria for characterizing elements as green infrastructure. In the field of study, the characterization of the periurban area, and its subsequent assessment as a green infrastructure, provide the guidelines for action for devising an Open Space Strategy. This strategy constitutes a cross-disciplinary planning tool for local authorities when reading the landscape.