Ecosystem Services for Planning Impacts Assessment on Urban Settlement Development

Abstract

At global level, land-use changes induced by urban growth processes are considered to be one of the most relevant threats to the conservation of natural habitats, their biodiversity and capacity to provide ecosystem services for human well-being. While in the academic field there is a growing interest in the methodological framework of ecosystem services, in the practice of urban and territorial planning there is a need for new methods and tools to support the assessment of planning choices’ sustainability. The aim of this work is to propose a method to evaluate the effects of expansion forecasts set in the urban plan (PRG) of the Municipality of Perugia. The comparison between the state of art and the forecast scenario highlights the degradation increase especially along the interface between urban settlements and agricultural areas, and the relevant habitat quality decrease in urban green areas and in complex agricultural systems close to built-up areas. In spite of the limitations related to the subjectivity of the parameterization of input values, the approach shows potential for the assessment of urbanization processes and for supporting the evaluation of planning choices.