A Multi-Scalar Green Infrastructure Project for the Landscape Enhancement and Regional Regeneration of Media and Alta Valtellina

Abstract

AbstractIn the process of updating the Lombardy Region’s territorial and landscape planning tools, the Green Infrastructure has been defined as a strategic landscape infrastructure built based on the interpretation, assessment, and mapping of Ecosystem Services, with the aim of increasing their relative performance and, consequently, their Natural capital. The Regional Green Infrastructure is inspired by the European Commission’s principles, defined as a network of natural, rural, and anthropic landscape elements planned at a strategic level to improve human well-being. The Green Infrastructure design is multi-scale in that it allows both for the analysis of Ecosystem Services using the most appropriate functional and ecological scale and for the formulation of strategies and objectives that can be taken up and systematised by the most appropriate planning and programming tools with respect to the scale of implementation. This paper describes the procedure for downscaling the project contents and design of the Lombardy Region’s Green Infrastructure in the pilot area of Media and Alta Valtellina, as a fragile landscape context subjected to significant planning projects scheduled for the coming years. The Green Infrastructure downscaling procedure also becomes an opportunity to systematise and highlight the synergies among the various strategic and design-related components developed in support of the Lombard landscape planning tools.