Ecological and landscape networks as strategic and cultural components of inter-municipal planning

This chapter is based on the author’s research activities on models of government of metropolitan territories and the relations between urban planning and emerging forms of supra-municipal aggregation, with reference to metropolitan areas (Italian and European) in which bottom-up initiatives of inter-municipal coop eration (bottom-up model) and supra-municipal government bodies (top-down model) coexist. The chapter proposes a reflection on the theme of the inter- municipal dimension, as a minimum territorial reference for the implementation of environ mental and landscape protection and enhancement functions, investigating the role of connective networks of green and natural and anthropic components within inter- municipal planning processes aimed at a strategy of metropolitan rebalancing and integrated urban regeneration. The chapter presents one of the European case stud ies investigated in the research and aims to identify possible theoretical- methodological and operational references for an innovative planning system that adopts an inclusive conception of the territory for unitary knowledge and design of the different components. Within this framework, the chapter focuses on the experi ence of the Scheme of Territorial Coherence (SCOT) of the Grenoble Urban Region, in which the system of networks of natural, semi-natural and anthropic components represents the reference framework for the implementation of urban regeneration strategies and metropolitan territorial rebalancing and, at the same time, the invari ant for the development and reconfiguration of the physical and socio-economic assets of the vast area territory, using the concepts of nature and landscape as cata lysts for regeneration and urban well-being.