Environmental Networks for Smart Territories - Urban Landscapes: Environmental Networks and Quality of Life - page 68

experiments outlined in Chapter 8, the environmental network will be the first
project to be implemented with the goal of providing a structural reference
framework and a spatial anchoring to other transdisciplinary actions.

7.1 The Environmental Network and Other Networks

in the City

In the European experience, the different environmental network projects,
which are becoming ever more widespread, can be divided into two different
types of approaches:

1. Those that have a vision of the environmental network bounded by a strict-

ly ecological field, extended only to favor the movement of animals and
plants, with the sole objective of finding empty spaces and passages with-
in urbanized areas.

2. Those that consider the environmental network as an infrastructure that, in

addition to guaranteeing the movement of animals and plants, brings into
play all urban, peri-urban, and ex-urban spaces that intersect it through
requalification and reorganization, favoring contact and osmosis between
areas internal to the city and natural areas in the context, consolidated
areas and areas in formation, old and new centralities, ecological continu-
ity and social frameworks [1, 2].

The Marche REM falls decidedly within this second approach, since it has
been designed to guarantee functional, cultural, recreational, and ecological
connections coherently with the redefinition of the landscape of the Adriatic
city. To define a register for reading the local characteristics of anthropic and
biological systems , evaluating structure, criticality, and opportunities, and to
program an appropriate design connection, the functional ecological units of
the REM maintain a dialogue with the landscape fields regarding the land-
scape plan undergoing revision, highlighting common implementation
processes (Fig. 7.1). Final design verification is therefore included in the
implementation process. It is developed with 25 strategic frames divided into
five themes and emerging contexts:

1. The coastal city and residual environmental relationships with the hills .

2. The settled valley floor , river connectivity , and green backbones.

3. Agrarian landscapes and the diffuse connectivity of inland areas.

4. The dilated Apennines: the transition between the ridges and the foothills.

5. The Apennine ridges and the connection between protected territories.

For each of these, the project strategy for the application of the REM has
been developed, and even the definition of timely interventions has been added
to the five themes. In this phase, actions have been introduced to define: