Speaker
Description
Peri-urban territories are complex socio-spatial configurations that challenge the dichotomous theoretical categories of urban and rural inherited from urban theory. They represent the local-scale outcome of spatial restructuring processes that organically intertwine decentralization, deconcentration, and territorial dispersion. These phenomena are observable both in the distribution of functions, built densities, and population, as well as in the extractive processes that subordinate these spaces to infrastructures serving urban performance. This dynamic results in a space devoid of long-term co-evolutionary processes (landscape), where specificities have been dissolved within a few decades, and the ecological context has become an instrument of the provisional present.
The intricate geography of peri-urban areas is symptomatic of multipolar organization, where residual spaces are simultaneously a frontier to be shielded from further urbanization and a porous "ecotone" open to new forms of use and sociality.
The closure of the peri-urban realm to urban externalization and extractive phenomena necessitates a process aimed at redistributing rights through a negotiated space where urbanity acknowledges an ecological context beyond the immediacy of present needs. This process, co-created with local communities, seeks to overcome hierarchical and anthropocentric conceptions of justice, fostering intergenerational co-ownership founded on socio-ecological relationships. Such principles resonate with Article 9 of the Italian Constitution, which links environmental protection, biodiversity, and ecosystems with the rights of future generations. This shift requires rethinking the individualistic conception of space, the anthropogenic pressures, and the fragmentation of ecosystems. It calls for the recognition of collective rights based on shared practices and «living uses», which transcend the dualism between city and nature, as well as the perceived separation of society and the environment.
The concept of civic uses offers a valuable reference point, as it shares, in its original configuration, a functional character with the peri-urban fringe, often viewed as a space of performance. Contemporary legislation reframes this functional aspect by emphasizing ecological and environmental protection, thereby embedding intergenerational co-ownership within values of territorial inclusivity (Mangone, 2022).
Such closure, paradoxically, opens up the regenerative potential of peri-urban spaces, envisioning eco-public networks at a metropolitan scale as incubators for new urban civic spaces (Formato, 2021) and spatial assemblages capable of recovering «living uses» (Capone, 2016: 621). Reconstructing a public framework of civic and collective rights, practices, and spaces establishes a connection between landscape protection (e.g., Constitutional Court ruling 310/2006) and democratic participation in decision-making. This reflects a collective capital linking land ownership to the community (Di Genio, 2019: 127-140) and liberates peri-urban landscapes from any further stable development or exploitation.
This process of "re-landscaping" reimagines spaces where quantitative consumption has already occurred, reassembling what remains into qualitative relationships through spatial practices. These practices oppose the «speculative supremacy of the conceived» and ensure that the «technical activation» (Capone, 2020: 34) of regulatory frameworks does not flatten space into a mere commodity or consumable asset.
References
Di Genio, Giuseppe (2019) Gli usi civici nel quadro costituzionale (alla luce della legge n. 168 del 20 novembre 2017). Torino: G. Giappichelli Editore.
Capone, Nicola (2020) Lo spazio e la norma. Per una ecologia politica del diritto. Verona: Ombre corte.
Capone, Nicola (2016) Del diritto d’uso civico e collettivo dei beni destinati al godimento dei diritti fondamentali. In Politica del diritto, 4, pp. 593-636.
Formato, Enrico (2012) Terre comuni. Napoli: Clean.
Formato, E. (2021) Nuovi Standard: boschi, radure e altre terre comuni. In Laboratorio Standard – Baioni, M., Basso, S., Caudo, G., Franzese, A., Marchigiani, E., Munarin, S., Renzoni, C., Savoldi, P., Tosi, M. C., Vazzoler, N. (eds.). Diritti in città. Gli standard urbanistici in Italia dal 1968 a oggi. Roma, IT: Donzelli editore.
Mangone, F. (2022) Tutela paesistica e usi civici in Campania. In Attademo, A., Formato, E., Russo, M. (eds.) I Saperi del Paesaggio. Studi. Napoli, IT: Artem, 404-405.
| Keywords | peri-urban, civic uses, re-landscaping |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
