Beyond the Infrastructure. Sustainable Landscape Regeneration Through Greenways: Towards Project Guidelines for the Sardinia Island (Italy)

Abstract

In the context of the challenges posed by development models based on overconsumption of natural resources, the paradigm of sustainability defines a new orientation for territorial planning and design. In this regard, greenways play a key role, contributing to safeguard the environment, rehabilitate the fragmented habitats, connect urban and rural areas, revitalize peripheral and degraded areas, and balancing economic growth needs with equal distribution of opportunities and resources. However, the prevailing technical and sectoral approach with which these issues are still addressed – reflecting the fragmentation of instruments and expertises involved in the territorial project – hinder the intervention’s long-term effectiveness. Starting from the critical analysis of the most significant experiences of greenways, this paper highlights the prevailing strategies and actions, in order to build a catalog of good practices transferable to the Sardinian regional context. Sardinia, in fact, represents a potential laboratory for the study of an innovative approach to sustainable territorial regeneration, conceived as an opportunity for local development starting from the networking of the resources – environmental, cultural, economic and social – that compose its complex landscape palimpsest.