Experience an Integrated Approach: Combining Sustainability and Aesthetic Quality with Inclusiveness and Equity Through a Multi-scalar and Multidisciplinary Design of Green Systems

There is a heightened awareness of the role that nature plays in health, particularly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic that coincides with pressing climate and social concerns. This has renewed attention to the benefits of green systems for both human and climate health, as pointed out by all the contributions during the study day. In this framework, consistent with the reflections developed in the two different sections of the book, this conclusion chapter outlines key research paradigms that influence the way we understand the benefits of nature, and how new directions of integrated approaches – multi-disciplinary and multi-scalar – can innovate re-generative design and policy. In the first part, the authors point out how biophilic design theory sits in this field, facing sustainability challenges, and how it can be and has been applied at different scales in the urban built environment, referring to the architectural scale. In the second part, the authors pay attention to the role of green systems in the reconfiguration of urban morphology for the aesthetic quality of cities, with reference to the urban fabrics scale. In the last part, the authors highlight how green networks can contribute to the strengthening of safe and inclusive social interactions, as well as eco-friendly lifestyles, with reference to the urban and territorial scale. Underlining, in this way, the transversal character of the approach identified in the context of the reflections carried out in the book, which also includes disciplinary contributions traditionally sectoral, such as psychology, ecology, law, and pursuing the objective of innovating in theoretical-methodological and operational terms the archetypal concept of garden, identifying the city as an Open Laboratory.