River management: an opportunity to implement landscape policies

The man-made environments close to the fluvial systems have led to an alteration in terms of water quality, exposure to hydrogeological risks and landscape degradation. If, for the first two, the Water Directive provides strategies and methods, landscape qualities still remain unaddressed. Furthermore, water space could be recognized as part of the urban green space as it plays an important and attractive role for people to use and enjoy. This paper enlightens multidisciplinary tools and approaches capable to combine river health and the landscape quality issues within a strategic vision towards urban regeneration, both presenting a review about River Contracts experiences dealing with policy’s scenario, and describing the Green Blue Infrastructure approach in its main design implications. River Contracts are integrated strategic planning tools for river management able to promote environmental and landscape restoration through prevention, mitigation and monitoring of hydrogeological and landscape emergencies. They represent an effective approach to systematise issues treated so far separately. Green Blue Infrastructure is a strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas able to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services (EC_ENV, 2016), notably including rivers, which helps conserve and restore the natural features by improving water quality, landscape and natural habitats. In conclusion, both approaches/tools, when implemented as part of a River Strategic Plan, provide not just the primary benefits of water quality improvement and the decrease in the hydrogeological risk, but also a wide range of landscape and social benefits.