Agriculture and Development Processes: Critical Aspects, Potential and Multilevel Analysis of Periurban Landscapes. Part I

This paper deals with the complex, intricate issue of the landscape features of the portions of land lying between the city and the countryside, which inherit from them and from their interaction, both strong points, potential and opportunities and factors of pressure and consequent critical elements. Several variables and aspects contribute to defining the quality of the landscape in these areas, as demonstrated by the many disciplines involved in analysing and planning them. The paper analyses the main landscape resources that characterise these territories, the productive and social-economic processes that involve such resources, which simultaneously fashion them and are conditioned by them, and the consequent territorial and landscape repercussions. This treatise, part of a broader study based partly on specific quantitative analysis of the development systems of appropriate sample areas, therefore focuses on analysing the critical aspects of agricultural areas on the urban fringe. This kind of area is increasingly assigned the essential function of improving the quality of life of urban populations, given the various environmental and social roles that agriculture has always played and continues to do so, albeit in different ways depending on specific local conditions, in addition to its purely productive roles. Moreover, many of the issues examined in the study for what concerns suburban areas are no longer a prerogative of periurban spaces and also extend to several rural situations with a low development density, where new dynamic and modestly-sized agricultural landscapes are arranged like tiles over the pre-existent rural - agricultural frame. Although the issues discussed do not cover all aspects of this question, they nevertheless fully embrace it, being inter-related to the other questions of an agricultural, town planning, environmental, architectural, social and economic nature. These considerations are essential for establishing strategic lines of development for these fringe areas, in which agriculture plays a key role in contributing to a balanced development of both urban and rural contexts. The analysis performed would suggest attributing agricultural and built-up areas equal status as a basis for policy making, in the awareness that each transformation of the former into the latter should be considered irreversible and entails environmental and social implications that should be carefully considered and pondered by planners. Some of the instruments needed to innovate and evolve the current approach to planning are already known and used in the sector. However, they are not always applied systematically within an organised model for the planning of periurban spaces, and not always duly supported by economic programming tools. These considerations therefore highlight the strategic and fundamental role of integration