Verso un paradigma qualitativo per affrontare consumo di suolo e vocazioni funzionali nella Città metropolitana di Torino

This contribution aims at presenting the ongoing results of “Eco-welfare and Inter-municipal Governance: Soil as an Infrastructure for Regenerating Territories”, a multidisciplinary research co-funded by DIST Excellence Dept. of the Polytechnic University of Turin in cooperation with a range of institutional and academic organizations. The goal of the research is to increase the understanding of the integration of ecosystem services’ (ES) knowledge and methodologies within urban and territorial planning processes. The case study is the metropolitan area of Turin (Italy) and the goal is to support the ongoing process of implementation of the new Territorial Plan (as required by Law 56/2014 which established metropolitan cities in Italy), specifically the construction of planning policies oriented to tackle more effectively the issue of land take both at metropolitan and local levels. The model adopted by the current Territorial Plan (Ptc2) is built on the subdivision of the metropolitan territory in three categories of areas (“dense”, “transition” and “free” areas), each of which matches with a set of prescriptions aimed at reducing the use of natural and agricultural land for locating new developments. The Ptc2 model presents some limitations due to the lack of consideration of the qualities of land on which urban developments are located because it is merely a quantitative model constructed through a statistical procedure based on the values of urban density. The research uses a more sophisticated approach for investigating the ecological and agronomic land qualities obtained according to the mapping of a set of ecosystem services through SimulSoil (an open-source plug-in in GIS environment delivered by the Eu Project Life SAM4CP 2014-2018). The objective is to produce a set of guidelines including evaluation criteria and rules for: i) costructing more effective land-use policies, ii) containing semi-natural and agricultural land take (not yet developed and urbanized although interlocked and/or adjacent to infrastructures, especially within Turin’s peri-urban areas), iii) reorienting territorial regeneration policies towards a better consideration of the agro-ecological performance of the soil and the improvement of green and blue connectivity.