The Territorialist Approach to Urban Bioregions

Abstract

Current trends in urbanisation have an extremely negative impact on human settlements and the living environment. Social, community and economic disruption, together with ecosystem depletion and loss of prime farmland, interact with the effects of climate change and mutually reinforce a downwardly spiralling process. Drawing on the legacy of the bioregional movement-and its forefathers in the regionalist movement-this chapter provides the main key points for setting up a “concrete and transformative utopia” with the goal of managing these damaging trends. A goal which hinges on the idea of territory conceived as “commons” and on recreating a coevolutionary relationship between human settlements and ecosystem endowment. In this context, this chapter underlines the importance of fostering a process with a bottom-up approach so as to restore a sense of “place awareness” to inhabitants, a key element for nurturing conviviality within communities and sustainable use of local/regional heritage, and to facilitate the establishment of self-reliant economies. Such a project “movement” will rely on the “Urban Bioregion” concept and its “construction elements”: local knowledge and skills, high quality ecosystems and hydro-geologic basins, stable floodplains, polycentric urban patterns, enhancement of public spaces, self-reliant local economies, mixed local energy systems, multi-functional farmland and wooded areas and, last but not least, the enhancement of local participatory democratic institutions. This chapter challenges the idea that a world of megacities is inevitable and lays out some strategic design directives for reversing top-down development models and for building up a planet of cooperative urban bioregions based on local societies and communities that are empowered and fair. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.