La scena paesistica: un lessico per il progetto

Dealing with landscape means dealing with social perception and aesthetics. As a consequence, dealing with landscape planning and protection should mean trying to regulate perception and aesthetics (often by prescriptive rules). Is there any way out? How this task of regulating landscape scenery has been undertaken? National and international experiences show that landscape scenery is not a well-defined field of application, however it is rich in practices, and advances in tecniques. The paper illustrates a methodology adopted by Piedmont Region and the Regional Directorate of the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, and its implementation in the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Langhe Roero and Monferrato Hills”. The case study of Piedmont Region is exceptional, firstly because of the importance given to landscape scenery in the planning regulation, secondly because the regional guidances have been implemented by local communities, even before the Regional Landscape Plan (RLP) was formally approved. Piedmont Region’s “Guidelines for the analysis, protection and enhancement of the scenic character of landscape” aim to support local authorities revising their local plans according to the RLP. The Region provided technical assistance to local authorities in the UNESCO Site, involving the numerous municipalities in a participative process, which mitigated and enriched the experts’ approach. The output was a series of maps of visual sensibility at a supralocal scale, which will be used in the planning processes of town planning revision and in local decision making by municipalities.