Eco-pedagogical Microforest Sapienza University

The Microforestation action is rooted at the neighborhood scale, aimed at integrating both regulative and social-cultural ecosystem services. In line with the principles of the UN Agenda 2030, the Eco-pedagogical Microforest of San Lorenzo neighboorhood, that took place in Rome, demonstrates that even a small patch of nature can increase young people’s biospheric values, influencing pro-environmental behaviors and actions, enhancing wellbeing. The process, from co-design to co-realization, explores an easy to handle and fast growing Microforest to be planted within the size of a neighborhood. Given that the Eco-pedagogical first goal is to attract and educate very young people, schoolchildren, to the cause of the environment and increase connectedness with nature. the project envisages the involvement of very young people, the schoolchildren community, from the early steps of the process through an Eco-pedagogical pathway. Therefore, from the beginning, the Microforest has become Eco-pedagogical. The theme is indeed a subject of significance considering that cities need more than ever to be sustainable, time for changes is short and Urban Forestation is the easiest and fastest way for cities to try and mitigate climate change impacts and increase resilience, especially in the dense city. The underlying challenges of the project can be summarized as following: − Diffuse Urban Forestation in the dense city, considering the principles delivered by Agenda 2030; − Promote Urban Forestation at the neighborhood scale; − Implement multistakeholder partnerships to support the neighborhood forestation project; − Design and realize a cutting edge Urban Forestation project local - based, low cost and fast growing; − Build a successful involvement process to empower children and teenagers in the design – realize – monitoring stages; − Design a eco-pedagogical pathway to awake in young generations empathy towards nature, turning education into an experience to learn about the environment; − Disseminate the project and build synapses with existing planning programmes. The choice of location is inspired by a place-based approach (Castellar, 2021), and is aimed at regenerating a central and disputed public space, with the purpose of developing multifunctionality and favor tolerance, new uses and behaviors, environment awareness and the respect of nature, stewardship to help the Microforest to grow and thrive. The Parco dei Caduti is a space included in the urban fabric surrounded by buildings, what Gordon Cullen would call an enclosure (Cullen, 1964). The area is lived in and crossed daily by the inhabitants and the children of the school, which is located just 20 meters from the entrance. Proximity with the school, multifunctionality, mixed users are the successful ingredients of a UF-NBS project that intends to increase conviviality, include nature in the urban landscape, develop links between citizens (young but not only) and forms of vegetation closer to a "nature reserve" than to a garden. Within a Green Infrastructure approach, the Eco-pedagogical Microforest of the Parco dei Caduti is a component of a neighborhood green layout, to be put in practice, designed to connect public space, existing green areas and those to be regenerated through green streets and slow mobility, with reference to the Barcelona Superblock Programme (Ajuntament de Barcelona). These interlinkages can have multiple benefits, providing ecosystem services (Hansen, Pauleit, 2014; Carrus et al. 2015; Zardo, 2017) integrating the social and environmental concerns of landscape with urban planning (Arcidiacono, Ronchi, 2021).