Resumen de Suelo rural metropolitano: estudios, planes y proyectos en tres regiones del sur de europa
This research deals with rural land treatment in the urban planning of three metropolitan regions of southern Europe from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day, focusing on how it has contributed to build a positive notion of it. We follow a three parts structure, combining three complementary approaches.
The first one handles representations of the rural in different studies developed between 1870 and 1960 in France, Italy and Catalonia, observing how they have contributed to create a certain territorial culture. In France, we highlight conceptual contributions of the School of Geography, methodologies of rural historiography, and efforts to recognize the diversity, distribution, and extension of rural structures. In Italy, Geographical societies and Tourism and Sports associations have created territorial iconography, contributing decisively to produce rural representations. Likewise, a particular dynamic conception of rural territories shows its economic, social, and political relevance in successive phases of the history of Italy. In Catalonia, succeeding ideological currents, from Renaixença to Noucentisme, sought to determine cultural characteristics in the territory. Moreover, important contributions were made during the second Republic to the urban and territorial culture.
The second part addresses the content of a series of metropolitan plans developed in Lyon, Bologna and Barcelona, between 1953 and 2014, taking into account ruptures and innovations in the representation and treatment of rural metropolitan land. The analysis is structured in four periods. Between 1950 and 1960, the rural exodus and the urban explosion marked an antagonism between urban and rural land treatment. The 1970s represent a breakdown introducing an environmental dimension in rural representation. In the 1990s, the incidence and changes of the European guidelines increasingly linked environmental and agricultural policies. Those emphasized assessing territorial diversity to adapt rural development strategies according to local specificities and, nevertheless, diversify activities. The last stage included the progressive claim of values and functions of the metropolitan rural land. Three ideas dominated planning considerations in rural territory: connection, coherence, and multifunctionality.
The third part examines recent projects in the Beaujolais, the periurban plain of Bologna, and the Penedès, which integrate objectives of territorial recomposition, restoration, and environmental balance and rural multifunctionality at different scales. What interests us is to see how they tackle the challenge of flexible dynamic management towards the diversity of cases and of restriction against tensions and threats of accelerated transformation due to their metropolitan location. Thus, we distinguish four complementary approaches of dealing with metropolitan rural land treatment: identification of systemic sets, application of network logic, sectorization, and identification of topological relationships.
