Strategies to reduce land consumption. A comparison between italian and german city regions

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to develop robust comparative information on land use and land use changes (LUCs) for representative European cities (Stuttgart in Southern Germany, and Milano and Brescia in Northern Italy). In the paper we present a measurement approach to analyze recent LUCs in the outskirts of the three cities and critically evaluate the results. Apart from the comparative results between the selected cities, the innovation in this study lies both in comparing for the first time Italian-German cases on these topics and in the novel approach to standardize this type of information for international policy assessments. In conclusion, we return to two main questions: 1. what indicators can be used to monitor drivers and environmental effects of LUCs; 2. what kind of urban containment strategies and policies can be identified as being effective.