URBAN REGENERATION, CLIMATE ADAPTATION AND TERRITORIAL GOVERNANCE. INTEGRATING URBANISM AND ECOLOGY IN THE PLAN

The profound changes arising from metropolization processes, the distinctive mark of the new urban question, require significant modifications as pertains to the meaning of the problems connected to urban planning, the environment, and the landscape; they highlight the inadequacy of certain conceptualizations and raise – today more than ever, in the current situation of global health emergency – the urgency of activating policies, strategies, and instruments providing integrated responses to the demands of the environmental regeneration, social revitalization, and cultural and economic valorization of the city. This is done by prioritizing the protection of health and the well-being of the settled communities, in order to restore prospects of fairness, urban-planning/ecological quality, and efficiency to the governance of cities and of contemporary territories. This scenario, which raises the need for an intersectoral and inter-institutional convergence among all the policies that impact urban regeneration and territorial governance, finds correspondence in the most recent Community policies and programming, and also constitutes a cross-cutting objective of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan – NRRP (Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza, PNNR) (Mission 5 Inclusion and cohesion (Urban regeneration and social housing), and of the PNR (National research programme) 2021/2027 (Thematic Area 2 Humanistic culture, creativity, transformations, society of inclusion, in close correlation with Thematic Area 5 Climate and Thematic Area 6 Environment). In this setting, this article presents some of the results of the research activities conducted by the authors, which highlight – starting from analysis of national and international planning experiences, and of best practices – the urgency of defining new perspectives and new theoretical-methodological references for an innovated planning system, as a tool for a sustainable and resilient regeneration of contemporary cities and territories, on a supra- municipal, municipal, and local scale, with significant impacts on mitigation and on adaptation to the effects of climate change.