Urban regeneration and socio-ecological systems: rethinking purpose through the Green Infrastructure approach

The opportunities that come from framing green blue infrastructure as a multifunctional network that forms a fundamentally vital part of the city are immense. This requires more than simply caring for the aesthetics of existing and future urban and peri-urban green spaces. Combining recreation with flood risk management, heritage with urban cooling, health promotion with economic growth and social inclusion imply re-consider the structural configuration of our Natural Capital, in terms of specific socio-ecological functions of the urban green spaces, just as we upgrade and adapt other forms of infrastructure. We also need to contemplate how to incorporate nature into buildings, districts and public spaces, and to define how the quality of the grey infrastructure of our streets and public realm could be improved through nature-based technologies and solutions (NBS). We need to fundamentally rethink the way we plan, design, implement, and manage the city’s green blue infrastructure (UGBI). While the UGBI strategy is not only about supply, it is clear that qualitative supply above all else is central to urbanites’ needs. With increased supply come opportunities to address health, well-being and accessibility, improved quality, renewal of degraded and post-industrial estates, help for people to meet their aspirations, and the ability to tackle entrenched issues like urban biodiversity, provision of ecosystem services, landscape democracy and resilient communities. From territorial level to the architectonical scale UGBI and NBS are technological solutions complementary and alternative to traditional systems for the processes of urban and building regeneration and adaptive transformation. In the proposed contribution, some implications for the urban landscape as well as ecological networks are discussed, also on the basis of selected Italian case studies.