Sustainable management of the territory. different approaches in Europe

The sustainability, from the Nineties, has deeply innovated the management of the territory in the direction to overcome the historical separation among economic and territorial processes and natural processes. This requirement has been adopted by the most recent European documents that promote the sustainable development of the communitarian territory as the European Spatial Development Perspectives (ESPD, 1999). This document made an innovation to the territorial policies because it tried to promote the integration among the organization of the territory and the protection of the nature, the environment and the landscape. In order to promote the integration of these policies, each member state has been involved in an innovation process. In this process is possible to distinguish two approaches: that German-Anglo-Saxon who has historically interlaced the management of the territory with the protection of nature and the valorisation of the landscape; that centre-Mediterranean that only recently is trying to overcome the separation between development and the protection policies. In this cultural context, the paper wants to describe the historical roots, the normative and operative differences between this two planning approaches, the common tendencies and the recent experimentations (especially of the Dutch and the German sustainable territorial planning). The recent innovations of the German-Anglo-Saxon countries suggest interesting guide-lines in order to help the different European territorial planning cultures, and particularly the Centre-Mediterranean countries, in the search of theirs individual sustainable planning course.