Abstract
Settlement and urban landscape quality is a vast field of research, ranging from studies on “the shape of the city” to studies on functions and services performed by the urban landscape. In Italy, a decisive steering role is entrusted to regional landscape planning, as introduced through the current Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape. Regional landscape plans define the rules to which all municipal plans must conform. This paper aims to assess the effectiveness with which the general principles and rules regarding settlement and urban landscape quality defined on a regional level through landscape plans are transposed and implemented on a local level through municipal plans. We chose the case study of Regione Toscana, which has a Regional Landscape Plan approved in 2015 (PIT/PPR) that identifies “settlement morphotypes” and “contemporary urbanisation morphotypes” and presents “Guidelines for landscape redevelopment of urbanised fabric in the contemporary city”. We examined how the eight municipal plans approved so far are addressed in the PIT/PPR contents. We also conducted a more in-depth study on topics of interest through structured interviews with four designers who were responsible for most of the plans analysed. We also conducted a more in-depth study on topics of interest through structured interviews with several plan designers. The results from the discussion showed some weakness in the PIT/PPR’s ability to guide local planning tools to improve urban quality. Additionally, the PIT/PPR’s effectiveness appears more evident in the rhetoric of arguments used by local plans than in the results of the transformations that they prefigure.
Highlights
Landscape quality in reference to the city and settlements is an extremely vast field of study referable to various scales, approaches and disciplinary traditions
The objective of this paper is to assess the effectiveness with which general principles and rules regarding settlement and urban landscape quality, defined on a regional level through landscape plans established by the Italian legal system, are transposed and implemented on a local level in municipal plans
We present the case study of Regione Toscana, which has a Regional Landscape Plan that was approved in 2015, which saw the collaboration of all the authors of this article from the beginning
Summary
Landscape quality in reference to the city and settlements is an extremely vast field of study referable to various scales, approaches and disciplinary traditions. Within these various meanings, we have chosen to focus on or take into account how this theme is treated in studies on spatial planning, landscape and urban planning; with a particular emphasis on morphological and functional components. Regarding the field that we have chosen, in a summary with an inevitable amount of simplification, we can identify two endpoints: one endpoint is studies on landscape quality of settlements (in which landscape is essentially seen as the forma urbis, or ‘shape of the city’); the other endpoint is studies on urban landscape quality with particular reference to a set of functions and services performed by the urban landscape. The first approach is rooted in a series of theories and practices that define urban limitations, which were developed primarily during the massive 19th-century urbanisation
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