Co-evolutionary Recovery of the Urban/Rural Interface: Policies, Planning, and Design Issues for the Urban Bioregion

Abstract

Current trends on urbanization seem to radically call into question inherited categories of “urban” and “rural” as concepts taken for granted in spatial planning and design domains, as well as entailing - especially in “global north” countries - an eclipse of the “rural” in a growing urbanized world. The chapter provides an alternative vision aimed to reformulate in transitional, relational, and co-evolutionary terms the relationship between these two domains especially pointing out the strategic role of the “urban/rural interface” and of its multifaceted and multi-level nature in offering the possibilities to better manage and master settlements evolution and growth. Drawing on this approach, the urban/rural interface becomes the spatial category that, in the framework of the urban bioregion concept, allows either to reformulate and innovate concept and categories of urban and rural - especially paving the way for an proactive protection of the latter - or to redefine and best tailor, in integrate and cross-scalar modes, policies, planning, and design tools according to endogenous local development scenarios.