MAGNAGHI (2020) p33-61

David Fanfani
Alberto Matarán Ruiz Editors
Bioregional
Planning
and Design:
Volume I
Perspectives on a Transitional Century
Bioregional Planning and Design: Volume I
David Fanfani • Alberto Matarán Ruiz
Editors
Bioregional Planning and

Design: Volume I
Perspectives on a Transitional Century
Editors
David Fanfani Alberto Matarán Ruiz
Architecture Department-Dida Urban and Spatial Planning Department
Florence University University of Granada
Florence, Italy Granada, Spain
ISBN 978-3-030-45869-0 ISBN 978-3-030-45870-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

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Contents

Introduction to Bioregional Planning. Relocalizing Cities
and Communities for a Post-oil Civilization�� 1
David Fanfani and Alberto Matarán Ruiz
Bioregional Bridge Across the Urban-Rural Divide �� 17
A
Robert L. Thayer Jr
Part I Rethinking Places for Community Life

The Territorialist Approach to Urban Bioregions�� 33
Alberto Magnaghi

Rearticulating the Economy from the Local Level:
Towards an Economy Rooted in Caring for Life�� 63
Marta Soler Montiel and Manuel Delgado Cabeza
Bioregion and Spatial Configurations. The Co-evolutionary
Nature of the Urban Ecosystem�� 81
Claudio Saragosa and Michela Chiti

Social Justice in Spatial Planning:
How Does Bioregionalism Contribute?�� 97
Coline Perrin
Part II Fields for (Re)framing Planning in Bioregional Sense

Bioregional Planning and Biophilic Urbanism�� 113
Peter Newman and Agata Cabanek

Co-evolutionary Recovery of the Urban/Rural Interface:
Policies, Planning, and Design Issues for the Urban Bioregion �� 129
David Fanfani
v
vi Contents
Agriurban Commons. Which Resistance

and Adaptation Processes to Metropolization? �� 151
Pierre Donadieu

Urban–Rural Relations as Assemblages: A Conceptual
Framework for Urban Food Policies�� 171
Gianluca Brunori and Paolo Prosperi

Looking Forward: Some Opportunities and Challenges
for Bioregional Planning in Current Policies
and Planning Framework�� 183
David Fanfani
Short Glossary�� 193
Maria Rita Gisotti
Contributors
Dimas Wisnu Adrianto School of Environment, Education and Development,

The University of Manchester, Oxford, UK
Christides Anastasios Bureau of Environment and Civil Protection (GPDE), GR,
Elefsis, Greece
Mavrakis Anastasios Institute of Urban Environment and Human Resources,
Department of Economic and Regional Development, Panteion University, GR,
Athens, Greece
Tasopoulos Anastasios Institute of Urban Environment and Human Resources,
Department of Economic and Regional Development, Panteion University, GR,
Athens, Greece
Stefano Bocchi Department of Environmental Science and Policy, State University
of Milan, Milan, Italy
Gianluca Brunori Department of Agrarian, Food and Agro-environmental
Sciences, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Agata Cabanek Curtin University Sustainability Policy (CUSP) Institute, School
of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
Michela Chiti Architecture Department, Florence University, Florence, Italy
Papavasileiou Christina Secondary Education Directorate of West Attica, Greek
Ministry of Education, GR, Mandra, Greece
Andrea Colantoni Department of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences (DAFNE),
Tuscia University, Viterbo, Italy
Anna Maria Colavitti DICAAR – Department of Civil and Environmental
Engineering and Architecture, University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy
Pavel Cudlin Global Change Research Centre, Academy of Sciences of the Czech
Republic, České Budějovice, Czech Republic
vii
viii Contributors
Sergio De La Pierre School of Architecture, Florence University, Milan, Italy

Manuel Delgado Cabeza AREA Research Group, Department of Applied
Economics II, University of Seville, Seville, Spain
Roselyne de Lestrange Faculté d’architecture, d’ingénierie architecturale,
d’urbanisme (LOCI) & Metrolab.brussels, Université catholique de Louvain,
Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
Pierre Donadieu École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles,
Marseille, France
Verouti Eleni Bureau of Environment and Civil Protection (GPDA), GR,
Aspropyrgos, Greece
David Fanfani Architecture Department-Dida, Florence University, Florence, Italy
Dominique Gauzin-Müller Architect, école nationale supérieure d’architecture
de Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France
Maria Rita Gisotti Architecture Department-Dida, Florence University,
Florence, Italy
Joseli Macedo School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University,
Bentley, Australia
Alberto Magnaghi Architecture Department, Florence University, Florence, Italy
Liakou Margarita Bureau of Environment and Civil Protection (GPDA), GR,
Aspropyrgos, Greece
Alberto Matarán Ruiz Urban and Spatial Planning Department, University of
Granada, Granada, Spain
Peter Newman Distinguished Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University
Sustainability Policy (CUSP) Institute, School of Design and the Built Environment,
Curtin University, Perth, Australia
Antonio Ortega Santos Department of Contemporary History, Faculty of Bachelor
and Arts, Granada University, Granada, Spain
Coline Perrin UMR INNOVATION, Univ Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut
Agro, Montpellier, France
Daniela Poli Architecture Department-Dida, Florence University, Florence, Italy
Paolo Prosperi Department of Agrarian, Food and Agro-environmental Sciences,
University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy
Joe Ravetz Manchester Urban Institute, The University of Manchester, Oxford, UK
Juan Requejo Liberal At Clave, Seville, Spain
Contributors ix
Luca Salvati Department of Economics and Law, University of Macerata,

Macerata, Italy
Claudio Saragosa Architecture Department, Florence University, Florence, Italy
Cividino Sirio Department of Agriculture, University of Udine, Udine, Italy
Marta Soler Montiel AREA Research Group, Department of Applied Economics
II, University of Seville, Seville, Spain
Kyvelou Stella Institute of Urban Environment and Human Resources, Department
of Economic and Regional Development, Panteion University, GR, Athens, Greece
Robert L. Thayer Department of Human Ecology, University of California,
Davis, CA, USA
Mingjie Wang Zhejiang International Studies University, Hangzhou, China
Carolina Yacamán Ochoa Department of Geography, University Complutense of
Madrid (Es), Madrid, Spain
Ilaria Zambon Department of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences (DAFNE),
Tuscia University, Viterbo, Italy
Maria Elena Zingoni de Baro School of Design and the Built Environment,
Curtin University, Bentley, Australia
About the Editors
David Fanfani PhD, is Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning in the
Department of Architecture at Florence University and lecturer in the Master of
Science Course in Regional Planning and Design and the Master of Science Course
in Architecture of Florence School of Architecture. His research activity focuses
especially on analysis and design at the regional scale, addressing matters mainly
related to peri-urban areas and reconnection between city and countryside, which,
according to an integrated and cross-disciplinary bio-regional approach, aims to the
recovery of a co-evolutionary relation between urban and rural domain. On these
subjects, Prof. Fanfani authored several publications and articles at national and
international level.
Alberto Matarán Ruiz is PhD in Environmental Science and Associate

Professor at the University of Granada. Prof. Ruiz has been researching and
teaching at the University of Granada since 2003. He is a professor in several
postgraduate programs including Urbanism, Regional Planning and Environment,
Agroecology, and International Cooperation. In the professional field, Prof. Ruiz
is environmental specialist in the local administration and previously worked for
the Environmental Agency of the Province of Cordoba, Argentina. He is research-
ing visitor at the University of Manchester, UK; University of Central Lancashire,
UK; Florence, Italy; Buenos Aires, Argentina; Universidad de la República,
Uruguay; and Universidad Santo Tomás, Colombia. Prof. Ruiz has authored
more than 100 publications within his research interests, initially centred on
water and spatial planning, and more recently on landscape and planning, food
planning and short food supply chains, and local sustainability in peri-urban con-
texts all around social participation.
xi
Introduction to Bioregional Planning.
Relocalizing Cities and Communities
for a Post-oil Civilization
David Fanfani and Alberto Matarán Ruiz
1 he Crisis of Civilization: From Development

T
to Post-development
The last global economic crisis, which affected much of the planet since it broke out
in 2008, is just one of the many representations of a civilization crisis which threat-
ens to extinguish the very existence of the human species. It is increasingly clear
that the problem is not due to a lack of development but to the capitalist and preda-
tory nature of development itself, a concept that has always been linked to the idea
of progress. This idea, in turn, is connected to the value system created within the
history of the Western civilization (López and Matarán 2011).
The current notion of development implies, among other issues, the colonization
of the world by the Global North, the economic war (Testot 2014, pp. 441–446) and
the plunder of nature, as shown by Latouche (2007). By drawing a parallel between
medical science and the notion of development, Naredo (2009) suggests that the
unhealthy striving for economic growth and the available technologies within glo-
balization intensify and ‘turn the human species into a terrestrial pathology, similar
to cancer in its effects on territory’.
It is thus important, in the current situation, to return to the idea that the crisis
goes far beyond a concept or discourse of development to be modified. As stated by
Edgar Morin:
The chapter is the result of a shared reflection and conception; nevertheless, paragraphs 1, 2, 4, 7
have to be attributed to Alberto Matáran Ruiz, whereas David Fanfani wrote paragraphs 3, 5, 6, 8.
D. Fanfani (*)
Architecture Department-Dida, Florence University, Florence, Italy
e-mail: david.fanfani@unifi.it
A. Matarán Ruiz
Urban and Spatial Planning Department, University of Granada, Granada, Spain
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1

D. Fanfani, A. Matarán Ruiz (eds.), Bioregional Planning and Design: Volume I,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_1
2 D. Fanfani and A. Matarán Ruiz
… it is indeed an auto-partial crisis, a cultural crisis of civilization, an industrial-economic

crisis, Western crisis, Eastern crisis, Southern crisis and planetary crisis. The ecological
crisis concerns just one aspect, one symptom of a much more radical crisis. This affects the
principles of intelligibility of the settled beliefs and driving force myths of our civilization.
In this very sense we are allowed to name it as a crisis of civilization. (Morin 1995)
2 he Global Ecological Crisis as a Matter Related

T
to the Human Settlement Rift with Nature
According to Toro Sànchez (2011), the ecological crisis could be defined as «an
exponential change in human ecological involvement in the Biosphere as a whole».
It entails two fundamental defining facts:
Human beings are capable of producing changes and alterations on environmental variables
with a planetary scale effect, because of their development and activity on environment.
On the one hand, “Human beings are capable of producing changes and altera-
tions on environmental variables with a planetary scale effect, because of their
development and activity on environment. [On the other hand], we define it as a
crisis because it is an emerging situation with no appearance of being sustainable. It
can be described as a shortage between the material demand of planetary human
metabolism and the supplies nature can provide in quantitative terms. But this short-
age must be assessed in more complex terms, in view of the fact that the risk does
not only derive from the depletion or deterioration of resources but from a loss in
physical and environmental functions and mechanisms which are necessary for
human development” (Toro 2011).
It is then a systemic crisis, stemming from an economic growth model whose
unsustainability—in material, energetic and ecological terms—had already been
envisioned with precision some years earlier, though not properly taken into account
(Meadows et al. 2004; Georgescu-Roegen 1976). Its main feature is a high entropy
level, meaning an irreversible deterioration of the relation between energy and mat-
ter and a deep alteration of complex ecosystems (Odum 1988). A model which is
now showing the limits of the immoderate trust paid by modernity in technology.
Unfortunately, based on the tangible effects, can we appraise in retrospect the
accuracy of those anticipatory considerations?
It is clear that we are currently suffering from the effects of environmental sys-
tem inertia and previous impact accumulation. This is the reality in spite of the
modest governmental attempts to reduce the causes of the environmental crisis in
the future (Riechmann 2018).
Built environment and human settlements are therefore affected by such factors
and processes that heavily damage the ecosystem. The amplification of the crisis
itself is fostered by processes of growing concentration and exponential growth of
urban domain (UN 2015; EEA 2006). These features, in turn, are strongly led by
productive specialization at the global level (Polanyi 1944) and by the unbalanced
Introduction to Bioregional Planning. Relocalizing Cities and Communities for… 3
prevailing ‘extractive’ model of capitalistic accumulation (Sassen 2012, 2014).

Unsustainable and unmanageable manifold forms of urban and metropolitan
agglomeration are then developed at regional level (Soja 2000; Wheeler 2011). That
even under the phenomenology of a ‘global gentrification’ process that affects
human settlements as a whole—also blurring, in spatial and functional terms, urban
rural divide (Brenner and Schmidt 2015)—as one of the main (spatial) tools to cope
with the financial crisis and perpetuate the capital accumulation mechanism (Lees
et al. 2016).
3 Issues for Sustainable Settlements Patterns and Design
Built environment produced by anthropogenic actions is being called into question

by the global geo-climatic drift, not only as a field affected by the global warming
effects but also as a tool which has proven ineffective in reversing the described
processes.
In this framework, then, climate change, desertification, inundations, droughts,
extreme weather conditions, sea-level rise, massive extinction of species and loss of
fertile soil merge and mutually reinforce with the above-mentioned urbanization
patterns. That raises up many issues that represent a huge set of challenges and set
up a remarkable endeavour in recovery and designing a balanced, sustainable and
fair human settlement. A commitment that should aim for a twofold objective:
On the one hand, it should contribute to developing strategies aiming to reverse
the long-term trends which led to the ongoing environmental crisis. On the other
hand, it should strive to connect the former issue to an endeavour to mitigate the
global change effects, primarily the climate change ones, through pro-active, adap-
tive and defensive strategies of the human settlements. That also envisioning sus-
tainable settlement patterns, models and design solutions at the various scales.
Consequently, planning must address this twofold problem—joint issues of
development and spatial forms—and revise its methodologies and approaches. Both
the traditional and current ‘modern’ knowledge which define the care of the historic
environment must be taken into account; moreover, these sources of information
ought to be connected and revitalized through a proper and contextual use of either
‘appropriate’ or innovative technologies.
Territory and human settlement matters, and the related environmental, social
and economic dimensions, should then be considered a crucial factor in re-building
and recovery of a life-supporting environment and no longer a destructive one. A
renewed co-evolutionary relationship between nature and culture, and among tech-
nology, natural environment and shared social values, must be established (Norgaard
1994), resulting in newly-recovered capabilities to reproduce territory as a ‘high
complexity living being’ structured and composed by ‘neo-ecosystems’ (Magnaghi
2011, p. 97) as results of a balanced mankind/nature interaction.
Thus, human settlements and the redefinition of territory interpretation and
design models have a central and strategic role related to the possibility of reversing
previously described trends and the general framework—as well as including a

strong bottom-up mobilization in the territories themselves.
On the basis of these assumptions and before introducing the urban bioregion
model in the context of the bioregional approach, a recall of some specific points
may be helpful in showing the ways modernity and the recent global financial drift
of the capitalist model of accumulation have involved human settlements, influenc-
ing their features. Features that are also conceived and managed as a tool for repro-
ducing the aforementioned development model.
4 he Crisis of the City

T
and the Territory: Deterritorialization
As we just pointed out, modern mentality has had a deep impact on the urban area
and the territory, reductionism being one of its key components. The humanist
Greek conception, which is still valid today (De Manuel 2007), included and inte-
grated the concepts of urbs, polis and civitas, aiming for a balance between the
settled entity and the settlement. But the Modern Age specialization upset that
balance.
In Ancient Roman culture, a balance among firmitas (firmness—strength), utili-
tas (commodity—utility), and venustas (delight—beauty) was subsumed in the ars
aedificandi (art of edifying). Then, in Leon Battista Alberti’s view, that balance had
to be revised during the Renaissance, according to the needs of human activities,
resulting in necessitas, commoditas and concinnitas (necessity, utility, harmony).
Nevertheless, the increasing influence of economy and technical, scientific and
financial powers has reduced the current mentality to only utilitas and necessitas.
The main reason for this is a limited understanding of the nature of the urban and
territorial phenomenon, which is confined to the mere management of shapes and
volumes in space, and to the organization of objects and artefacts, such as buildings,
streets, canals, networks and other infrastructures, with the belief that—above all
thanks to technologies, matter and energy disposal—it may be the solution to all
human problems.
Although widely criticized, this reductionism can be found nowadays. The origin
of some current principles in planning can be traced back, at least in part, to Le
Corbusier conceptions. In the words of the prominent Rationalism promoter within
the Modern Movement, territory ‘as a tormented entity must be flattened and regu-
lated in order to build the essential functions of a rational city in every country of
the world’. (Corbouisier 1963).
In this way, contemporary cities are tending to an unprecedented condition, influ-
enced by technological development and the use of non-renewable energy sources
(mainly fossil sources). It is the megalopolis form, a pattern which is endlessly
repeated and told to be the climax of the urban and human evolution by
institutionalized media, but which is, in fact, proving unsustainable in current use
(Magnaghi 2011 cit., Davis 2006).
The growing tendency to lose autochthonous territorial values in cultural pro-
cesses—such as planning and the territory project which lies behind—is at the basis
of the deterritorialization of metropolis (Magnaghi 2011, cit, pp. 23–44). Its origins
can be traced back to the hegemonic replication of an unsustainable development
model, resulting in a loss of cultural and ecologic diversity. In other words, while
technology—it seems—‘liberates’ human society from territory and culture, severe
environmental impact and social inequalities are produced in the process, due to the
unequal access to technology, inter alia.
The loss of the ‘circular’ and co-evolutionary relationship between urban and
surrounding environmental domain is well represented by modern productivist agri-
culture model and farmland exploitation. In fact, agriculture is ‘de-territorialised,
that is, carried on without any reference to protection and reproduction of regional
land, soil quality and ecosystem viability, with no commitment to supplying local
market with fresh and healthy food, and finally with a complete lack of local knowl-
edge, competence and skill enhancement’ (Altieri 1989; Gliessman 1997). Land,
soil, environment and farmers’ capabilities had to adapt to the myths—and con-
nected equipment and inputs—of the so-called ‘green revolution’ and of its sup-
posed increasing crops. Such processes, which have appeared from the outset of the
industrial market economy, originated with the disintegration of the ecological and
productive ‘proximity’ connections between urban domain and surrounding region
area. The consequence is a critical ‘ecologic rift’ between city and countryside,
which was first envisioned and well described in Marx’s seminal writings (Bellamy
Foster 1999).
This model is widely represented by the disciplinary approaches of planning,
historically based on a developmental view (Fariña Tojo 2011) that is completely
unaware of agro-environmental and ecological matters. The strongly sectorial meth-
odology of this approach has proved neither able to mitigate nor reduce the severe
impact on the landscape and the environment, which is a consequence of the territo-
rial transformations due to the economic dynamics and planning.
5 nergetic and Socio-ecologic Transitions as the Main Issue

E
in the ‘Century of the Great Challenge’: Recovering
the Centrality of ‘Place’
The above-mentioned multidimensional crisis determines a high degree of unsus-

tainability in the current world system, where the possibility of a civilization’s
breakdown does not seem to be remote (Diamond 2005).
An integrated and multidisciplinary approach is thus necessary in order to set out
a reinterpretation of planning and multiscalar tools in territorial project. Connections
among different areas of activity should be considered, in order to face the afore-
mentioned problems and by adopting a place-based focus.
In this framework, the energy matter must be considered as a fundamental one.
As a matter of fact, the above mentioned progressive detachment between cities and
surrounding regions was triggered and fostered by the ‘fossil energy regime’ as the
driving force behind modernity, and its apparently everlasting and cheap supply of
power (Jancovici 2013). That detachment was one of the main bases on which local
and global development set off. Consequently, the energy, matter and information
proximity flows that had previously characterized—although not exclusively—such
a relationship were substantially weakened.
As a result, city and settlement forms started to base on private car hyper-
mobility, ecosystem destruction and the concentration of directional activities in a
few world ‘core cities’, both—albeit with different features—in the global North
and in the global South (Sassen 2012, cit.). Two seemingly opposing joint processes
were then entailed: a strong polarization of the human settlements in some ‘city
regions’ or ‘megalopolis’ on a planetary scale (Neumann and Hull 2011), alongside
with a remarkable spreading of residential, tertiary and commercial activities, fea-
turing ‘low density’ and quality urban habitat.
In this context, the degradation of peri-urban rural spaces is noteworthy. These
areas, which used to be an essential part of cities and towns’ living system, being a
key element for the survival and prosperity—now for sustainability—of settlement
systems, have been and are being destroyed, irrevocably at times. Causes can be
found in residential, commercial and industrial urban growth, as well as in the con-
stant construction of infrastructures, in a twofold way: directly, with the physical
occupation of the space, and indirectly with the degradation processes engendered
by this growth-based territorial model on the surrounding areas. Some examples of
these processes include areas which are abandoned in view of a possible ‘urbaniza-
tion’, territory fragmentation, destruction of the heritage and agricultural infrastruc-
tures, dispersion of pollutants and waste, and the pressure of the population on open
spaces among others. Furthermore, ‘fossil energetic turn’ also triggered another
important driver in this direction that relates to the hyper-productivity and global-
ization aims of food system productions. In this framework, peri-urban farming has
undergone a strong loss of profitability owing to its weakness in the context of the
globalized and specialized agri-food system that also transformed food production
in the framework of commodities market.
In the energy domain, a large-scale transition is then a crucial demand: it would
mean a solution for the problem of carbon sink depletion and the climate crisis it
produces, as well as for the depletion of energy sources related to different peaks of
availability in fossil fuels. Furthermore, an analogous transition is highly necessary
in order to deal with the problems of an ever-growing part of the population, whose
access to natural resources is being reduced by the overexploitation caused by the
voracity of the global consumer class (Sachs 2011).
Based on the aforementioned considerations about the energy regime of moder-
nity, the change of this regime itself could entail a radical shifting towards more
sustainable economies and settlement patterns (Rickwood 2009; Hopkins 2008;
Newman 2009; Thayer 2013, Jancovici, cit 2012, pp. 203–215). In these, the territo-
rial framework is conceived and featured as a system where the information, energy
and matter flows are continuously exchanged between built and natural environ-
ment, at a regional and local scale primarily.
Conceptualizing the socio-ecological transitions in spatial terms, that is, focus-
ing on the place they are planned to occur, is one of the fundamental tasks in this
‘Century of the Great Challenge’ (Riechmann 2013) we are facing. It is, in fact, a
key approach, since all social processes have an effect on space and the transition
alternatives must find their way to connect with the place they set in.
6 he Bio-regional Model and the Urban Bioregion

T
as a Basis for the Re-localization of Local Development
and Human Settlements
As we have seen, the contemporary metropolitan model, which has been shaping
the territory for more than a century, is characterized by a voracity which is «topoph-
agous» (place-destroying), hypertrophic (producing an exacerbated growth)
(Magnaghi 2011, cit.) and carcinogenic (Naredo 2009).
As we have seen, recovering the environmental quality and sustainability of the
built environment implies the necessity of regenerating and rebuilding some under-
pinning relationships of proximity and co-evolution between urban settlement and
the relative ‘eco-regions’. That, especially, requires inhabitants and communities to
recover not only the sovereignty principle but, as well, the willingness and wisdom
to use and administer territory resources in a regenerative way. Thus, according to
this goal, the different articles in the present volume intend to explore the hypothe-
sis of a regionalist approach recovery and, mainly the bioregionalist one. This can
be defined as a cross-disciplinary paradigm suitable to conceive, analyze and design
a territorial context fitting with the recovery and enhancement of the complemen-
tary relationships between geo-ecosystems and anthropogenic factors, city and
countryside, nature and culture.
In pursuing that aim, the volume mainly refers to the contribution inherited in the
planning domain by the seminal works proposed in the twentieth century by Patrick
Geddes’ activity and writings, the American regionalism of Regional Planning
Association of America of Mumford and McKay and W. Odum’s Southern
Regionalism (Friedman and Weaver 1979, pp. 29–41), up to the most recent works
and ideas proposed—in a meaningful, although not complete, continuity with the
former—by the North American bioregional movement, especially by authors,
planners and social activists, such as K. Sale, P. Berg, R. Dasmann and others (Sale
1991; Berg and Dasmann 1977; McGinnis 1999; Thayer 2003).
This extensive and multifaceted legacy left by the aforementioned ‘bioregional’
authors serves here as a theoretical, methodological and practical framework that
the book primarily aims to recover and adopt. That with the aim to point out some
principles and methodological issues that may prove strategic in facing the prob-
lematic framework which has been described. They can be summarized as follows:
• co-evolutionary approach between natural environment and anthropo-
genic action.
This point refers to the need to recover an operational, complementary and bal-
anced relationship between natural environment and anthropogenic action. During
civilization’s history, the ‘proximity’ interactions’ between nature and culture, tech-
nology and cultural progress, communitarian values and political principles of gov-
ernment and development were featured as a whole in a specific regional domain. It
had been the most common relationship before the advent of the fossil energy era,
which introduced the ‘de-territorializing’ factors in former ‘discursive communi-
ties’ (Norgaard 1994 cit.pp. 165–167). The co-evolutionary view overcomes the risk
to adopt a deterministic environmental approach—that could be pointed out in some
recent bioregional contributions—privileging a ‘possibilistic’ model of human
development. In our view, the interaction between technical capabilities, environ-
ment and culture originates territorial structures and forms as complex ‘neo-
ecosystems’ (Magnaghi 2011 cit., p. 91) or a ‘second-nature’ (Clement 2012):
innovative elements ruled by a joint action of natural laws and of the human ‘eso-
somatic’ tools and knowledge capabilities (Beatley 2011).
From this perspective, sustainability of human environment refers to the con-
struction of systems of virtuous relationships between the territory components
(natural environment, built environment and anthropic environment). In this way, as
Magnaghi points out (2011, cit), ‘territory’ stands as a reference for sustainability,
while ‘natural environment’ is considered a part of it. Hence the requirements for
sustainability are modified by including the enhancement of the relationships among
culture, nature and history, which lies at the heart of the bio-cultural memory as
defined by Víctor Toledo and Narciso Barrera-Bassols (2008).
• self-reliance and self-provisioning vs self-sufficiency: towards a circular bio-
regional economy
The prospect of the regional re-embedding of human settlement doesn’t entail
the research of new forms of fanciful bounding and autarchic parochial closure. In
the bioregional view, the ideal territorial level should host forms of settlement
whose life is guaranteed, to the greatest extent possible, by the circular relationships
and flows of matter, energy and information, which is achievable within their sur-
rounding ‘proximity’ territory. This evidently implies an economic principle of both
self-reliance and cooperation, in conceiving bioregionally settled urban domain and
regions (Scott Cato 2013; Thayer 2013), based also on a principle of import-replace
economic development innovative model (Jacobs 1984). Obviously the self-reliance
principle, although excluding the self-sufficiency idea, entails a strong commitment
on behalf of local communities to the recovery of sovereignty on their reproductive
principles and to the fair and balanced use of regional resources and endowments
(Pezzoli and Leiter 2016) without excluding a mutual and cooperative exchange
with other regions lacking and not producing loco goods and artefacts.
• governance bottom-up and federal cooperation, local willingness and univer-

sal values;
The recovery of sovereignty in the use and management of regional resources of
the settlement areas entails the support and enhancement of the administrative polit-
ical control over the territory itself, at the local level. Nevertheless, the current
expulsive and ‘extractive’ processes and mechanisms that global economy triggered
worldwide (Sassen 2014, cit) lead the deliberative and decision-making power at
the regional/local level to be increasingly taken over by the central—national or
transnational— one. Such forces are usually characterized by an ‘extra-territorial’
nature, so that the set up international and national public bodies and rules of control
are not able to deal with them.
These public bodies and rules do not seem to be capable anymore of competing
against the financial drift of globalization. On several occasions, they actually
resemble the simulacrum of the legitimacy and legal principles that they were cre-
ated to ensure. Obviously, the much needed change of political prospect and policy
practice would not automatically create ideal local communities: the bioregional
principles of sovereignty, subsidiarity and shared responsibility will only be fol-
lowed thanks to a governance and deliberative approach commitment. The self-
government and federalist idea that underpins the bioregional political model, as
well as the transition processes in general (Foxon 2011), have an ‘incremental’,
piecemeal growth and ‘constructive’ nature. That is to say, they imply starting from
the existing practices of self-government, even if they may be restricted in scope
and may raise only limited issues. Those practices, especially the ones related to the
use of commons, may work as an initial enzyme posed at an appropriate scale (Sale
1991, cit. pp. 52–66) for starting a process of empowerment, awareness-building
and sense of belonging to places on behalf of the inhabitants and local communities
as a whole. The principal aim would be, according with the bioregionalism basic
principles, re-learning rules and inhabiting place rules in a shared, responsible and
participated way. Consequently, the bioregion is not to be generally conceived as a
matter of fact, especially on the post-metropolis horizon. Rather, it should be con-
sidered a project or a ‘concrete utopia’ and a process of democratic, participative
and deliberative empowerment in the territory government and use forms.
Finally, it is worth noting, as argued by Mumford, such a principle of participa-
tive democracy and regional collaboration or subsidiarity is not the antithesis, but a
complement of the more general shared legacy of universalistic and ruling princi-
ples of mankind on earth (Mumford 1938). This is a guarantee against risks of self-
ish parochial closure and, moreover, it aims to foster and protect plurality, differences
and solidarity between different communities and cultures.
• From the bioregion to the urban bioregion
The bioregional model emphasizes the historical role of mankind and the organi-
zational forms of settlement in modelling basic endowments of geo-ecosystemic
nature. Related to this, the growing pervasive role of the urban development, at the
planetary scale, leads to conceive such a paradigm or territorial model not only as
an ‘underpinning image’ in supporting new plans, projects and practices to inhabit

places. Besides that, it also serves as a tool to regenerate and recover the built envi-
ronment as an already configured whole, characterized by heavy de-structuring phe-
nomena in social, functional and environmental aspects of everyday landscape. In
this sense, in these volumes, a shift is stressed, passing from the possible drift of the
bioregionalism as a philosophy mainly committed with ecologically-minded visions
where the issue of settlements stands in the background, to the more integrated
concept of urban bioregion (Atkinsons 1992; Magnaghi 2014), according to which
the bioregional paradigm is conceived as a set of ruling references, even for the
urban domain, strongly connected to the agro-ecosystemic and long-lasting geo-
structures of the surrounding areas (Calthorpe 1993, Church 2014).
The starting premise is that urban matters and domain still remain a non-
negligible condition of the social, cultural and economic organization of the human
communities, even if they require to gain a deep revision and criticism in their
recent development patterns. An urban condition that, besides, in the late modernity,
has assumed plurality of forms in spatial and social qualitative terms. And, as well,
a dimensional prevalence in terms of land-taking and demographic thickness. That
either considering its quantitative expansion—frequently under the unsustainable
patterns of urban sprawl—and, moreover, referring to its capacity to exert a form of
“remote control” and exploitation on area spatially far from urbanized systems.
7 Volume Aims, Topics and ‘Spirit’
The analyses and proposals collected in this book that we have edited in two vol-
umes under the name Bioregional planning and design, are written by a group of
internationally recognized authors who are working, although not exclusively, on
bioregional planning, especially in the European context. Our aim is not one to pres-
ent an exhaustive theoretical and methodological body about bioregional planning.
It turns out to be impossible at this stage of practices and reflections. More mod-
estly, we try to collect some key points of view and practices that seem to con-
verge—more or less explicitly and at least for some elements—towards a bioregional
way of approach in planning and regional/urban design. That of trying to trigger and
foster—mainly in the European context—a possible vision and debate about a
place-based, bottom-up approach to planning, viable to jointly focus on endogenous
local development and sustainably built environment design. As we explain below,
volume I of the book reflects some general and preliminary approaches to biore-
gionalism. They are complemented by different ways of combining planning with
bioregionalism, making reference to some basic concepts like commons, justice,
biophilia, and the urban-rural relation. Whereas in volume II, sectoral approaches
are presented, addressing some key points as energy, soil protection, urban ecosys-
tem, heritage, agroecology and food sovereignty. To end this volume, we include
some practical examples, where some ‘bioregional-like’ approaches are being
adopted either in a social or political framework, mainly in the European context.
In this volume I Bioregional Planning and Design. Perspective on a transitional

century, Part I, ‘Rethinking places for community life’, aims to render a framework
of development visions that imply and require a new co-evolutionary relationship
between human settlements, place resources and environment. In those visions, the
bioregional approach is the main reference, although it is articulated in different, yet
complementary, points of view (see Thayer and Magnaghi articles). The pivotal
issue is the special attention to be paid to the recovery of a regional economy based
on a self-sustainable, reproductive use of resources on behalf of localized human
societies (Soler and Delgado Cabeza chapter) according with metabolic and eco-
logical principles that underpin a low entropy model of settlement development, as
shown in the Saragosa and Chiti chapter.
Finally, a critical review of the dimension of spatial fairness and justice as the
pivotal component of a bioregional approach to be explored is then carried on by
Colin Perrin in her Chapter. In this contribution is assessed the way how bioregional
paradigm relates to justice conceptions and theories, concerning especially environ-
mental resources, spaces and land access. The contribution highlights how—
although with possible threat of some parochial closures—a bioregional approach is
basically endowed and suitable to foster an inclusive planning model for a redis-
tributive and fair process of resources distribution to cope with socio-spatial
inequalities. A model that contrasts with the current, top-down and ‘extractive’
development and planning models.
In a nutshell, this part intends to set the general reference points of a bioregional
idea of development that will be afterwards better evaluated, through some general
issues, about spatial planning domain, in Part II.
Then, Part II—‘Reframing planning in bioregional sense’—aims to deal with
some general spatial matters that strongly connect with the practice of the spatial
planning domain. These matters lead to a general integrative, place-based and re-
territorialized approach to planning and design. They explore the following
questions:
• The biophilic approach, conceived as a methodological and practical vision
where nature and wildlife newly integrate with built environment. As a result,
quality improvement of settlements is supported, and the challenges of climate
change impacts at different scales are took on as well (Newman, Cabanek
chapter).
• The wide and multidimensional perspective stemming from a new transitional
and relational conception of the urban/rural interface as a domain to be explored
for the recovery of an innovative urban/rural mutual support according a multi-
scale vision (Fanfani chapter).
• The role of ‘commons’ as shared and heritage goods on which underpin a regen-
erative, shared, and bioregional practice of landscape planning and design and
territory social reconstruction (Donadieu chapter).
• Analysis methods, design and planning for regional food delivering schemes or
systems which contribute both to a lasting and circular post-oil re-localization of
energy and matter flows, and to a wider reconstruction of a fair and healthy
b ioregional economy. The main point being how to best interact with spatial
features, city/countryside relationships and with the general planning system in
the context of a cross-disciplinary dialogue (Brunori chapter).
Finally, a conclusive Short Glossary chapter by Gisotti is aimed to provide an
integrative contribution to allow readers better comprehension of several key con-
ceptual/disciplinary categories and technical/special terms adopted in the Italian
territorialist planning approach and which have been used/introduced especially in
the Magnaghi chapter. Categories that are of background reference for many other
chapters in this book. The main goals are firstly to deepen and best contour the
meanings that such categories convey, mainly relating to the cultural milieu where
they originate, and second, to let readers appraise similarities and differences of
their use in such a context with the ones possible in Anglophone cultural/disciplin-
ary domain, conceived in a wider sense. We hope that terms and categories included
in the glossary section would help readers better understand their meaning and con-
tribute to bridging communication gaps that might be caused by misunderstanding
in translation from Italian to English words, hopefully enhancing and underpinning
a fruitful international dialogue.
As mentioned, this volume—as part of a whole unique book—has a continuation
in a second one published under the title: Bioregional Planning and design, Issues
and Practices for a Bioregional Regeneration. This complementary volume aims to
describe and select some matters that represent compelling elements to be treated in
planning domain—also several European and international experiences of innova-
tion for that field—and well-fitting with a bioregional approach.
8 inal Remarks. Recovering a New Relationship Between

F
Regional Development and Spatial Planning: A Prospect
for Bioregional Governance
As shown by the previous points, the bioregional approach represents a paradigm in

the field of physical planning, as well as a reference framework aiming to support
self-reliant communities and local bottom-up development schemes. Therefore, the
bioregional project refers not only to the domain of spatial planning and regional
and urban design but also to a new approach towards the goals and methods in pub-
lic policy creation, in the field of local and socioeconomic development. Without
this kind of awareness and scope, the bioregional model would represent, at best, a
good repository or toolkit for the mitigation of some of the problems that affect
regions and cities as a whole.
Accordingly, the strong connection between territory and landscape amenities is
acknowledged, together with the call for a sustainable management of regional
endowments and the fostering of local development processes. Furthermore, we
highlight the unavoidable socioeconomic decline threat for regions and communi-
ties that were not able to cope with a suitable control over global dynamics of
transnational financial power and to ‘engage’ global capital at the local level (Power
1996). In this sense, reversing the point of view makes it possible to point out that
the construction of resilient regions under the economic-productive prospect neces-
sarily means to foster ‘proto-bioregional’ settlement frameworks based on endoge-
nous development processes. Especially, according to Cato and Cato and James,
innovative and fair production-consumption connection schemes have to be
enhanced at the regional scale (Scott Cato 2013; Scott Cato and James 2014).
Within this perspective, it is worth indicating that the bioregional approach to
planning deeply affects—and interacts with—the policy sciences, political econ-
omy and local development governance domains. This approach means to set out
and aspire to a shared governance model of deliberative and participative democ-
racy for the enhancement of the increasingly weakened forms and institutions of the
representative democracy. The aim is to give back to local communities the non-
negligible commitment to practice willingness and sovereignty, with the purpose of
the protection and stewardship of their own life-places.
In this direction, the educative and didactic commitment, aimed to promote self-
help and self-development, acknowledged to planning in the regionalist and biore-
gional approach (Mumford 1938 cit., Friedmann and Weaver 1979: cit. pp. 37–40,
Sale 1991, cit., Thayer 2003: pp. 52–70), becomes a pivotal factor and value, and
underpins the volumes’ aims. Nevertheless, on occasion, this implies the opportu-
nity and the necessity to adopt critical and ‘radical’ planning approaches (Friedmann
1987; Forrester 1989). These are suitable to pursue and achieve the necessary
empowerment in reframing decision-setting on the part of local communities, in the
direction of a model of community-led local development (CLLD) practices, which
have been positively recognized even by the EU commission (EU 2014).
In conclusion, the aim is to pursue, through regional planning and design prac-
tices, an alternative local and urban development approach, which may best fit and
foster sustainability targets, fixed by many global government bodies. As a conse-
quence, the current problems, originated by climate change effects and economy
unfairness, may be tackled. Whereas, on the side of the territorial settlement struc-
ture, the growing polarization and hierarchization of the urbanizing processes,
which overwhelm the capabilities of regional and local governance and decision
level, may be reversed.
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A Bioregional Bridge Across
the Urban-Rural Divide
Robert L. Thayer Jr
1 Premise
One of the most important, yet often overlooked, philosophical questions of today
is: What should be global, and what should be local? Another way of asking might
be: At which scales, in which places, and by what means are the most important
human endeavors appropriate? It is, perhaps, the most crucial question in all of
human geography, yet its answer, or answers, will bear upon the lives of all other
living things, and maybe even the future of life itself.
For the past 40 years, various individuals and groups have dedicated their careers
from different perspectives, and by different means, to one singular conclusion: that
the best way to ensure a sustainable and resilient future for human and non-human
life is through thoughtful consideration and dedicated “reinhabitation” of one’s life-
place, or bioregion. Over time, a recognized body of theory and practice has evolved
that recognizes the limitations of globalism. Instead, a relatively new social move-
ment, with both a theoretical framework and multiple examples of grounded appli-
cation, offers an alternative, geographic-centered approach to life on earth by
approaching and solving environmental and social problems one natural region
at a time.
In a book published in 2003 (LifePlace: Bioregional Thought and Practice),
I wrote:
A bioregion is literally and etymologically a “life-place”1—a unique region definable by
natural (rather than political) boundaries with a geographic, climatic, hydrological, and
ecological character capable of supporting unique human and nonhuman living communi-
ties. Bioregions can be variously defined by the geography of watersheds, similar plant and
animal ecosystems, and related, identifiable landforms (e.g., particular mountain ranges,
prairies, or coastal zones) and by the unique human cultures that grow from natural limits
R. L. Thayer Jr (*)
Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA
e-mail: rlthayer@ucdavis.edu

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_2
18 R. L. Thayer
and potentials of the region. Most importantly, the bioregion is emerging as the most logical
locus and scale for a sustainable, regenerative community to take root and to take place.
(Thayer 2003, p. 3)
Various authors in this book will elaborate on the concepts I mentioned above.
However, “Bioregional thought and practice” is just a name; a label to make descrip-
tion easier. Most of the actions on the ground that are truly “bioregional” do not
self-refer to that name at all. However, just because a label for the activity is not
often mentioned in practice does not mean the activity itself and the thought behind
it are not happening. Before I wrote LifePlace, there were no professional schools
of “bioregional planning”; now, several have renamed their regional planning pro-
grams or departments as “bioregional planning,” as they acknowledge that there is
something essential to such natural place-based theory.
This particular geographic focus has emerged from a wide variety of theoretical
origins: “tributaries,” if you will, or domains of endeavor that contribute to the main
channel of bioregional practice. In the United States, contributors to this “water-
shed” of theory include the original bioregionalists, Ray Dasmann, Peter Berg,
Kirkpatrick Sale, and the poet, Gary Snyder; regional planners, such as Ebeneezer
Howard, Patrick Geddes, Lewis Mumford, and Ian McHarg; geographers (abiotic,
plant and animal), like Alfred Wallace, Miklos Udvardy, C. Hart Merriam, Frederick
Clements, and Robert Bailey of the US Forest Service; economists, such as
E. F. Schumacher and Jane Jacobs; social theorists, like Canada’s John Ralston Saul
and Montana’s Daniel Kemmis; and place-based writers, such as Wendell Berry,
Wes Jackson, Ursula LeGuin, Terry Tempest Williams, and David Robertson.
Fundamentally, a life-place approach begins from two perspectives: the land and
the individual. One must first understand that all life flows from the stuff beneath
our feet and above our head: rock, soil, water, and air. In a stair-step fashion, life
gradually builds upon that ultimate foundation to include weather patterns, plant
and animal ecosystems, age-old human survival and living strategies, artistic and
celebratory practices, trading and economic structures, land planning and building,
and finally, personal and social responsibility, leading to stewardship and resilience.
Inherent in a bioregional or territorialist approach is a sense of intimate practice:
enacting the skill, knowledge, and dedication necessary to permanently dwell on, or
inhabit, the landscape in its fullest context.
Nearly a half century has passed, wherein countless examples of this kind of
practice have taken place throughout regions of the world. Watershed stewardships
are routinely established; “friends of ….” groups have formed to protect vast marsh-
lands, mountain ranges, coastlines, forest regions, expanses of tundra, and every
other conceivable unique geographic feature. Ancient crop-growing or fish-catching
regions are defended by those who have learned their stewardship over generations.
Non-profit foundations have been established to teach urban citizens that they are
part of a larger, natural region. All of these phenomena recognize the essential role
human behavior plays in the practice of permanence and reverential inhabitation.
However, in the past several decades, a growing philosophical and political gap
between rural and urban populations of the United States has arisen. As a long-time
A Bioregional Bridge Across the Urban-Rural Divide 19
American proponent, author, and formerly cheerful booster of bioregional thought

and practice, I will confess to be intensely concerned by what I have called the
“Great American Divide.” While similar developments may be occurring elsewhere
in the world, I can only address the problem from the vantage point of my own
country: The United States.
2 The Great American Divide
What is the problem? In the United States, rural populations, mostly white, are
becoming more politically conservative. Urban populations, ever more diverse, are
growing more liberal. Even the largest cities in Texas now vote Democratic, while
the Republicans own the physical and philosophical territory just beyond nearly
every metropolitan city limit sign in the country. Each constituency listens to differ-
ent opinion leaders and lives within its own communication echo chambers.
This widening ideological gap makes collaboration across the urban-rural thresh-
old in any bioregion a very difficult proposition. But since bioregions extend from
urban centers to suburbs to rural farms and ranches all the way to wild lands, they
call for cooperative effort between two major American populations who are other-
wise drifting farther apart. On either side of this Great American Divide are some
actions quite inimical to the essence of bioregional consensus.
3 My Definition of Bioregional Practice
There are a number of meanings of the word “bioregion,” and several interpretations
of the concepts of bioregional theory and practice. For some, a bioregion is strictly
an ecological concept that should, therefore, define and direct “appropriate” human
behavior. For others, a bioregion is a territory defined by certain cultural life ways
practiced by humans over a long period of time. Still another interpretation is that
the bioregion is a territory of appropriate scale and efficient physical, entropy-
fighting relationship between the sources, uses, and distribution of essential living
systems, such as food, fiber, water, energy, and material flows.
My concept of a bioregion combines all of the above, but especially includes a
shared system of human values, where local stakeholders take on an active role in
the social construction and physical caretaking of the region itself. In this view, no
one person or group has complete dominion over the management direction of the
place. Countless examples of this process still abound. Watershed stewardships and
local food movements remain two of the most potent approaches to bring urban and
rural constituencies together. However, the Great American Divide threatens the
future of such efforts.
20 R. L. Thayer
What follows are three examples of recent and current activities which could be
construed as “bioregional,” but I will argue that only one fulfills the definition and
purpose I believe is worthy of the label.
3.1 The State of Jefferson
In 1941, some disgruntled residents of the borderlands of northern California and

southern Oregon put up a roadblock of protest, rifles at the ready, handed out pam-
phlets, and declared themselves to be residents of the independent state of Jefferson.
Their protest was largely fueled by what they felt was complete inattention by state
governments in Salem (Oregon) and Sacramento (California) to their desires for
more local economic control over mining, timber harvesting, and ranching. While
Pearl Harbor, World War II, and the sense of national purpose that followed soon
overshadowed their efforts, the conceptual State of Jefferson rose again during the
last two decades. At first, the concept was local and inclusive. The regional National
Public Radio station, broadcasting from the liberal city of Ashland, labeled itself
“Jefferson Pubic Radio,” and a wide group of citizens shared a common sense of
place (ijpr.org).
Unfortunately, as of this writing, one finds significant and dire changes in the
media face of the State of Jefferson, with ultra-right-wing white nationalism rising
to the fore. The “Jefferson State Militia” (jeffersonstatemilitia.com) rants that the
“Shit Storm is Approaching,” declares that they are “One nation, under revolt,” rails
against the federal and state governments, champions the “Coming American
Revolution,” runs images of Confederate flags and other extreme-right-wing para-
noid positions. Another website, the soj51.org, states that “We the people of the
Jefferson Counties are not the playthings of the criminals who rule over California”
(soj51.org).
A curious geography has evolved: what was once a movement centered around
the Klamath-Siskiyou borderlands of southern Oregon and northern California has
expanded steadily southward and eastward, and one now sees State of Jefferson
flags and decals all over northern California east of the coastal mountains. Many of
the northern California counties have had referenda or supervisorial actions address-
ing the question of succession. While most of these referenda have failed or been
tabled, some, like Tehama County’s, have passed. The State of Jefferson movement,
having originated in a regional context, has become somewhat of a right-wing polit-
ical philosophy that is spilling far beyond the confines of its original region (https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_(proposed_Pacific_state). The original website,
(stateofjefferson.com), still aims to give an inclusive and objective view, but is
ignored by the angry, various, now-competing websites and hard right political
spin-offs. The current State of Jefferson movement is no longer bioregional and is
dominated by rural, white nationalist conservatives who fear the government and
the urban regions. Consequently, the State of Jefferson represents one extreme,
polar rampart of the Great American Divide.
3.2 The Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument
In 1997, an organization was formed at the conjunction of Lake, Napa, Colusa,

Yolo, and Solano Counties called the Blue Ridge–Berryessa Natural Area
Conservation Partnership (BRBNACP). This mouthful-named organization was
established as an all-inclusive volunteer group of those private and public partners
who had an interest in conservation of the part of the inner Coast Range that formed
the headwaters of Putah and Cache Creeks. The monthly meetings attracted ranch-
ers, wildlife managers, environmentalists, boaters, range specialists, professors,
mining interests, rafting guides, and entrepreneurs. Care was taken to not to create
political boundaries, and few disputes over philosophy reared up (http://brbna.org/
library/).
However, in 2005, a group of Sierra Club and wilderness advocates from Davis,
California, formed a new organization (“Tuleyome,” ironically named after a para-
graph in my book, LifePlace), joined BRBNACP, stirred up political and philo-
sophical differences, and finally left the Conservation Partnership to launch a
competing movement whose aim was to create a conservation area in the Putah-
Cache headwaters from land federally owned by the United States Forest Service,
the Bureau of Reclamation, and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Opposition
was strong from private landowners and those county governments with conserva-
tive boards of supervisors. Oddly, one of the driving factors motivating the Tuleyome
“environmental” group was its fear that a wind farm would be established on Walker
Ridge on BLM land in the region. They also objected to the inclusion of a “Working
Landscapes” assessment in the GIS analysis being prepared by BRBNACP, fearing
that it would give landowners and ranchers too much legitimacy. By usurping the
role of the stakeholder group and replacing it with an environmental advocacy group
driven by liberal environmentalists from Davis, California, roughly 10 years of
social capital developed by BRBNACP was destroyed.
By cultivating relationships with the Democratic Party majorities on county
boards of supervisors, by lobbying California state senators and assembly members,
and by gaining the support of one of California’s United States senators, Tuleyome
succeeded in having a motion placed on President Obama’s desk, which he signed,
to designate the area as the “Berryessa-Snow Mountain National Monument.”(https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berryessa_Snow_Mountain_National_Monument)
Ironically, the newly-named national monument does not include “Lake”
Berryessa, a reservoir under the control of the US Bureau of Reclamation (Reservoirs
are not allowed in National Monuments, apparently). Furthermore, the monument
boundaries only include those portions of federal land lying in counties with
Democratic-majority boards of supervisors. Federal lands on the Republican-
dominated Colusa County side of a major mountain range were left out of the
boundaries. Hence, the monument is a political, not an ecological, construction.
Half of the land originally considered for wind energy development lies in
Colusa County.
22 R. L. Thayer
The upshot: a national monument many private landowners did not want was
superimposed on a bioregion in which they lived, by a government they did not
trust—exactly the kind of action that lends fuel to rural right-wing movements like
the State of Jefferson. I have had a lengthy interest and involvement in this (my
home) bioregion, yet I consider the creation of the Berryessa-Snow Mountain
National Monument to be a case of a twentieth century organization using twentieth
century tactics to solve a twentieth century “problem” in a twenty-first century
world crying out for a different approach.
Berryessa-Snow Mountain National Monument therefore stands on the opposite
rampart of the canyon of the Great American Divide from the State of Jefferson.
There are similar impositions occurring elsewhere in the country where federalized
national park or monument proposals are met with keen resistance from local rural
residents. In the case of Berryessa-Snow Mountain, the land in question was already
in the federal public domain, so the designation as a monument does little in the way
of “protecting” it further. When compounded by the confusion that Lake Berryessa
is not included within the monument named after it, and that major portions of the
US Forest Service Land and BLM land lying within Republican-dominated coun-
ties were not included, the bioregional integrity of the monument designation seems
flawed and overtly political in nature. Lastly, the designation of a monument does
little in the way of lifting the livelihoods of those rural residents who make their
living from working landscapes surrounding the federal lands. Since no federal dol-
lars will be allocated by a Republican-dominated US Senate to “improve” the man-
agement of the new national monument, nothing much will change other than a
label for the place. Was the designation of Berryessa Snow Mountain as a national
monument an example of bioregionalism at its best? My answer is no. When the
voices of various stakeholders in a particular bioregion are silenced by the one-sided
domination of an activist group, the region is not well served, and the Great
American Divide is exacerbated. The Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument
and the State of Jefferson, in my view, are both extreme examples of the Great
American Divide.
3.3 The Klamath River Accords
In contrast to the two examples above (one driven by rural conservatives and one by
urban environmentalists), there is a stellar example of a natural region doing the
genuine, hard trench-work of local bioregional management. The “Klamath Water
Wars” is a story about a conflict over water and food in a bioregion and a resolution
to that conflict. The Klamath River rises in the Cascade mountains north of Klamath
Lake in southern-central Oregon, flows through volcanic soils into northern
California, crossing the Scott Valley, skirting the Marble and Siskiyou mountains,
passing through several ancestral native American territories, through redwood
groves, and empties into the Pacific ocean at Requa, California. In 2001, during a
drought, irrigation from federal projects normally delivered to the Klamath Basin
farmers of potatoes, strawberries, and other crops had to be restricted for the health
of endangered salmon. Farmers broke the locks on a federal diversion gate and took
what they considered “their” water. As a result, eighty-thousand salmon died down-
stream in early 2002, infuriating both native tribes and commercial salmon fisher-
men. Both sides lawyered up and set their respective Republican (upstream) and
Democratic (downstream) representatives against each other in Washington.
Lawsuits were filed, and animosity ensued. More than thirty organizations were
party to the early attempts to reach a watershed-wide solution. At least one salmon
fisherman in downstream Orrick and one potato farmer in upstream Tulelake each
put up signs in their yards, declaring themselves as “endangered species.”
After years of wrangling, acrimony, and legal procedures, a breakthrough was
reached when upstream farmers and downstream fishermen decided they must actu-
ally travel to each other’s domains and meet where each made their living.
PacificCorp, the utility owning four rather outdated dams along the river, agreed to
remove those dams, as the costs of relicensing them outweighed the small energy
benefit received, which the utility could easily make up elsewhere. For participants
and observers alike, the accord was marked by a celebratory barbeque attended by
farmers and fishermen, who roasted salmon and potatoes on the same sticks.
As of this writing, the former Republican US Congress failed to provide funding
for Klamath River dam removal (which will be the biggest dam removal project in
the world). However, the participants, not wishing their decade-and-one-half effort
to be for naught, conceived a plan to ask the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
to decommission the dams, obviating the need for congressional action. While there
is still some political friction, actual watershed stakeholders have worked too hard
at reconciliation to see angry polarization spoil a decade or more of creating “social
capital,” and there is still considerable potential left for creative solutions. Also, a
more favorable US House of Representatives has been seated that may help speed
up the accord along its intended trajectory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Klamath_Basin_Restoration_Agreement).
Ironically, the 15-year effort by the 30-plus separate partner organizations result-
ing in the Klamath Accords took place in the very bioregion that State of Jefferson
claims as its original birthplace. Furthermore, the breakthrough occurred when the
federal agencies themselves realized they were getting in the way of real dialog
between aggrieved private and tribal parties both upstream and down, and stepped
back from the fray. The participating Klamath partners have demonstrated by hard
work, diligence, and compromise the true nature of a bioregion. As Daniel Kemmis
outlined in his seminal volume, Community and the Politics of Place, a region is the
“table” around which the sense of a true natural community can gestate (Kemmis
1990). A bioregion effort, then, should be considered as an open hand, not a
clenched fist.
24 R. L. Thayer
4 The Geography of the Great American Divide
To extrapolate from the three examples of regional identity mentioned above, it is

necessary to talk about the evolving geography and nature of the “Great American
Divide.”
Two graphics illustrate that geography perfectly: the 2016 presidential election
map results from both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The map of territories
won by Clinton territory is a rough approximation of liberal-leaning America, while
Trump’s is indicative of rural America. Both parties’ presidential candidates were
considered to have strong negatives; one won the popular vote, the other won the
Electoral College. Therefore the voting patterns for each represent a reasonable
template for the geographic divisions in American culture. (For much more detailed
information on this division, readers should search the Pew Research Center data
and maps, www.pewresearch.org.)
With minor exceptions, liberal America is a geographic archipelago of “islands”
concentrated around major metropolitan areas (even those contained in “red,” or
conservative-tending states). If one were to translate this into the language of land-
scape ecology, these liberal areas would be called patches. On the other hand con-
servative, Republican territory occupies most of the land area of the United States,
or, in landscape ecological terms, the matrix. Anyone with even a vague notion of
bioregions or any form of systematic regional geography will immediately recog-
nize that, as these geographic divisions harden and become more ideologically
separate and antagonistic, cross-regional cooperation becomes that much more
difficult.
5 Causes of the Great American Divide
While entire books have been written about how American culture arrived at this
point, I will venture my own take on the origins of the Great American Divide. The
first place I will lay blame is on growing economic inequality. The authoritative
tome on this subject is Thomas Piketty’s “Capital in the twenty first Century.” While
both urban and rural constituencies blame different causes for this trend (rural: mul-
ticulturalism and government policy; urban: corporate hegemony and runaway capi-
talism), the percentages of rural poor and urban poor are roughly the same. Both
rural and urban constituencies have been mostly treading water economically, while
those at the top of the pyramid grab the spoils. However, as Piketty lays bare,
inequality has been growing globally, and not just in the United States. We have all
heard of the statistics of the percentage of world’s or the US wealth that is accumu-
lated in the top 1% of the population, but there is a plethora of other related statistics
that support the reality of growing inequality. Two different political belief systems,
however, have exploited the discomfort felt by the growing cadres of rural and urban
“have nots” such that scapegoats like undocumented foreign workers are blamed
instead (Piketty 2014).
The second culprit I would argue to be a cause for Great American Divide is the
advent of social media and personalized technological communication. We have
lost many, if not most, of the real-time, real-place spaces where we once rubbed
shoulders with one another. Instead, we communicate only with our “friends.” We
read only the news media we trust not to be “fake” (each side considers the other’s
news sources to be illegitimate). Truth slips away, and we believe much unverified
information. In such a supersaturated media reality, we each create our own echo
chambers in which we dwell, dismissing information not deemed compatible with
what we have constructed as our own realities.
6 Trump
It is widely assumed by many observers that current US President Donald Trump

has caused the angry divisiveness now prevalent in the United States. However, like
a number of others, I would argue that Trump is the result, not the cause, of that
divisiveness. The Great American Divide fractured long before Trump emerged; he
merely became the bellwether of that growing divide. The Great American Divide
caused Trump, not the other way around. Trump has merely given many Americans
surrogate permission to lay bare their simmering prejudice, even hatred, in ways
heretofore considered impolite or impermissible. I need not mention the specific
and manifold violent examples of this hatred, as they have been thoroughly exam-
ined in global news.
I believe that the United States suffers from a strong reaction by white people to
losing their grip on political power, much as South African whites did during the
death throes of apartheid. Many white Americans could not stand the idea of a black
president, and have acted out accordingly ever since Obama was elected. Trump’s
subsequent election has only facilitated the overt expression of this racial prejudice.
We knew that recalcitrant white people would not give up their presumed position
of superiority without a fight, and they are fulfilling that expectation now. In short,
as a country, we have never quite finished the Civil War, and that, in part, creates the
divisions that now threaten any hope of bioregional accords across the Great
American Divide. Yet, unlike the first American Civil War, the Great American
Divide of today has no clear, singular geographical “Mason-Dixon” line. Instead,
we manifest thousands of ideological and political cleavages across nearly every
urban-rural boundary in the country. We are hard pressed to imagine ways of heal-
ing this urban-rural ideological rift; the problem breaks into ever more localized
pieces, like a giant cultural fractal puzzle pattern. Instead of a civil war, we are start-
ing to see increasingly violent skirmishes by various groups spread across the geog-
raphy of the country. Yet a solution must be found; it is naïve to assume that either
the cities or their regional countryside and wild lands could every really exist with-
out each other.
26 R. L. Thayer
7 Reversing the Flow of Value
The Great American Divide is not simply about rural white folk who are reluctant
to share power and status with people of color. It is also about the withering urban
comprehension of how life has been, and still is, lived in rural America. A critical
lesson emerged from the 2016 election that urban liberal constituents must learn: a
nation that divides its rural citizens philosophically and politically from its urban
population cannot hold, and will eventually collapse upon itself.
Central to the dilemma is a simple fact: rural people, as inheritors of a long tradition
of Jeffersonian agrarianism, must still make (or once made) their living off the land,
while urban constituents often seem to forget that the land (and in our global economy,
even American land) is the basement of the economy. It is true that economic studies
point toward a declining contribution of the agricultural sector (even when multiplier
effects are considered) toward total GDP. While California is the largest agricultural
producer among the 50 US states, agricultural production contributes only 2% of the
massive California economy, which is the fifth largest in the world, exceeding that of
the United Kingdom. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/05/05/
california-now-worlds-5th-largest-economy-beating-out-uk/583508002/)
However, as the economic calculus moves away from major metropolitan areas,
the percentage that rural residents contribute to the economy through farming,
ranching, mining, and logging, increases. Add in the loss of resource-dependent
occupations that have gone offshore due to uncontrolled excesses of global econom-
ics or mechanization and the extreme dissatisfaction of a large percentage of mostly
(but not exclusively) rural America comes into focus.
For a moment, let’s set aside the obvious, nasty trick Trump pulled by scapegoat-
ing blacks, Hispanics, gays, immigrants, women, etc., such that rural constituents
conflated this racism, sexism, misogyny, and xenophobia with their real concern:
being left behind by the global economy, and discounted by their urban constituents.
Indeed, it is hard for the liberal establishment to make this separation, but make it
we must.
8 Technopoly
First, however, we must take a theoretical detour; there is another phenomenon at

play here. There are those who believe (and I am one) that we now live in a “tech-
nopoly,” and that the steamroller of technology, as Elon Musk says, will roll over us
and our jobs will gradually be replaced by computers, algorithms, and robots. This
seemingly unstoppable march of technology and its concurrent effects on the GDP
has unfortunately hit the rural landscape and extractive industries first. But make no
mistake, after decimating the rural landscape and its extractive or agrarian indus-
tries, it is coming for our suburban, then urban, jobs afterward. No one will be unaf-
fected; it is merely a matter of time.
Some suggest (e.g., Elon Musk, Erik Brynolffson, Martin Ford, Jaron Lanier, the
late Neil Postman, and others) that there will need to be a creative means of com-
pensation to ordinary citizens for the loss of their ability to work. One such pro-
posed solution is the Guaranteed Minimum Income, or GMI. This would be a kind
of reverse taxation, and a form of unemployment compensation on a scale hereto-
fore unheard of in the United States. It would also most likely be an anathema to the
traditional rural employment based upon extracting a living by working in, or on,
the land. Ultimately, the GMI would work its way up (or into) the urban economy,
as medical professionals, attorneys, and other managerial employees are slowly
replaced by informatics, algorithms, and robotic machines. In this future (which I
believe is both inevitable and approaching fast), both rural and urban workers are
similarly at risk. Technopoly is an equal-opportunity job killer: yesterday it was coal
miners; today it is lawyers who are being replaced by algorithms and computing
(Postman 1992; Lanier 2013; Ford 2015).
Let us now make the critical jump back to the survival of rural constituencies. We
may start this by considering the situation of a hypothetical rice farmer in Colusa
County in the central agricultural valley of California. What do urban communities
seem to demand of this rice farmer and his rice-farming neighbors, besides the rice
crop itself? We would like that farmer also to provide us with water conservation,
water quality improvement of the run-off from the fields, wildlife habitat for water-
fowl, clean air, habitat for spawning salmon in nearby streams, open space and
aesthetic beauty, hunting and fishing opportunities, and access to land for recre-
ation. And this farmer is currently expected to provide these benefits solely from the
global price of rice received from a market controlled by a few gigantic corporations
like Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto, or Cargill. The expectation that rural com-
munities should provide “us” (the urban majority) with the benefits we seem to
demand, but are not willing to pay rural residents for, is a maladaptation of a global
economy run amok. And this is not even considering that the real enemy of the rural
American is the corporatization of agriculture and the epic, downward-squeezing of
the price offered to farmers (or “growers,” as the euphemism now goes) for
their labors.
Consider a new idea: if the urban-centered majority actually wants these values
from the rural landscape, then let us devise a way to return economic value to the
rural environment via some kind of flow of money. If we value what we want rural
landscapes to provide, let’s pay them for providing it, even if that means payments
for NOT taking certain actions. (There is plenty of precedent for this to occur in the
United States’ federal farm bills of the recent past.) These kinds of flows of mone-
tary value toward rural land uses we expect have often been analyzed using
willingness-to-pay methods, but these do not capture the entire spectrum of values
implicit in rural landscapes. One essential component of a healthy bioregion, there-
fore, should be one where its rural residents can make a decent living and whose
work is appreciated by the urban majority.
Metropolitan areas of the United States contain the vast majority of the popula-
tion, yet much of this population has no connection to, decreasing experience with,
and little knowledge of rural lifestyles or endeavors, such as agriculture, stock
28 R. L. Thayer
raising, forestry, or mining. This is merely a fault of ignorance due to diminishing

exposure, not because of malicious intent on the part of city dwellers.
On the other hand, rural populations, once dependent on land-based livelihoods,
have had to take second careers in nearby cities and towns. The amount of land
necessary for an American family of four to survive has expanded exponentially,
until only enormous ranches, vineyards, or farms can support their residents solely
without secondary employment. Rural residents resent this trend and, in some cases,
misplace the blame for their plight by scapegoating “illegal aliens” (whom they
often must employ to work on their lands to make financial ends meet), or regula-
tions that restrict their livelihoods without offering any compensation for that
restriction.
9 Model Bioregional Organization: The Center

A
for Land-Based Learning
Located in rural agricultural lands in Solano County, California, there is a highly

successful non-profit organization that I consider a model for the bioregional
approach to bridging urban and rural philosophies for the benefit of the land and
people themselves: The Center for Land-Based Learning, or CLBL, for short. CLBL
was the brainchild of Craig McNamara, son of former US Secretary of Defense,
Robert McNamara. Craig wanted to become a farmer, and subsequently moved to
northern California and bought a walnut farm (about as far away from Washington
politics as one could get!). He established the Center for Land-Based Learning in
1992, with the following mission:
Our mission is to inspire and motivate people of all ages, especially youth, to promote a
healthy interplay between agriculture, nature and society through their own actions and as
leaders in their communities.
The Center for Land-Based Learning envisions a world where there is meaningful
appreciation and respect for our natural environment and for the land that produces our food
and sustains our quality of life.
CLBL, then, was born out of joint respect for both environmental stewardship
and local agriculture. There are a number of CLBL programs. One bears the acro-
nym, SLEWS, which stands for “Student and Landowner Education and Watershed
Stewardship.” SLEWS engages California high school students in habitat restora-
tion projects on farms, orchards, and ranches. Many of these high school students
come from underprivileged urban areas, and many have never been on a farm or
ranch before. They are invited at the behest of the orchard owners, farmers, and
ranchers who volunteer their private lands for program. Under the guidance of men-
tors and instructors experienced in environmental restoration, the urban students
plant native plants, hedgerows, and riparian trees on these private, rural lands. Aside
from the obvious learning that goes on among the students, the program brings
together urban youth and seasoned farmers and ranchers, and a mutual respect and
understanding develops between the two groups. Other CLBL programs achieve
similar interactions across the urban-rural divide. A program called “FARMS”
(Farming, Agriculture, and Resource Management for Sustainability) provides
innovative, hands-on experiences to urban, suburban, and rural youth at working
farms, agri-businesses, and universities. The California Farm Academy is a 7-month
internship program that provides an intensive overview of what it takes to succeed
as a farmer or rancher.
Both FARMs and the California Farm Academy place 80% of their (often urban)
graduates in farming careers and farm incubator programs, also often helping young
farmers find land to farm and, eventually, to own. The Center for Land-Based
Learning is perhaps the best contemporary example I know of a bioregionally-
focused non-profit organization that connects urban and rural constituents together
for the sake of both groups, and of the environment itself (https://landbasedlearn-
ing.org).
10 Conclusion
The genesis of the bioregion movement burst forth in the late 1960s and early 1970s
in the United States, but reached its apogee during the 1990s, when governments
like the states of California and Nebraska and the nation of New Zealand wrote into
their laws participatory, adaptive management of regions defined by ecological
rather than political dimensions. During post-2000 years, the political divisions
already present in the American landscape were exacerbated by the ascendance of
electronic communication, the division of the news media into partisanship, and
self-reinforcing social media cliques, and the economic stagnation of the middle
class (both rural white and urban mixed ethnicity), while wealth accumulated in the
uppermost strata of society. Jobs, both rural and urban, have been permanently lost
to off-shoring, mechanization, informatics, robotics, and algorithms. Conservative
rural populations and urban progressives, while knowing less and less about what
each other does for a living, form crude stereotypes of each other, and isolate them-
selves even further as part of what some commentators have called the “Big Sort”
(Bishop 2008).
Yet we all occupy a bioregion, and wherever that is, it most likely extends from
urban to suburban to rural to wild lands. Water, food, energy, habitat, raw materials,
tourism, health care, and education, all flow between or span the breadth of a biore-
gion, which we, of course, share with manifold non-human species. It is an illusion
to believe that the city could survive without the countryside and vice-versa.
In spite of the Great American Divide, I remain convinced that a bioregional
approach to planning the American landscape is absolutely crucial to the future
health and welfare of all Americans. But bridging that growing divide will now
require even greater effort than ever before.
There is one idea that could be extrapolated as a necessary component of biore-
gional planning, and one that takes the Center for Land-Based Learning’s approach
30 R. L. Thayer
one step further. Imagine that all across America (and, by extrapolation, the coun-
tries of the world) exchange programs for high school students were to be created,
(with only willing participants, of course) that allowed rural students to live with
urban families for 2 weeks, and urban students to live with rural families for 2 weeks.
It may be necessary to reestablish this kind of real-space, real-time exposure
between the various residents of a bioregion that have been eliminated by electronic
communication “echo chambers,” job-killing technologies, and crude stereotypes of
those on the “other side.” In the United States, as this urban-rural political and
philosophical divide becomes a chasm, we urgently need a reconnection across it. I
suspect that in the many countries represented by the authors of other chapters in
this book, similar healing is urgently needed across urban-rural divides in their bio-
regions as well.
Current trends and political realities now place a very heavy burden on the realms
of bioregional thought and practice. Yet that body of theory and practice itself may
be the best bridge we can imagine across the growing cultural divide between urban
and rural constituents.
References
Bishop, B. (2008). The big Sort: Why the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Ford, M. (2015). The rise of the robots: Technology and the threat of a jobless future. New York:
Basic Books.
Kemmis, D. (1990). Community and the politics of place. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Lanier, J. (2013). Who owns the future? New York: Simon & Schuster.
Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard
University Press. Translated by Arthur Goldhammer.
Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Knopf.
Thayer, R. L., Jr. (2003). LifePlace: Bioregional thought and practice. Berkeley: University of
California Press.
Part I
Rethinking Places for Community Life
The Territorialist Approach to Urban
Bioregions
Alberto Magnaghi
1 From Contemporary Urbanisation to Urban Bioregion
The astounding dimensional growth of contemporary urbanisation—the UN esti-

mates that, in 2050, some 6.4 billion people of the projected global population of
9 billion will be urbanised—threatens to definitively sever the territorial roots of
urban areas: the very location of historic cities, at the confluence of waterways and
roads or on strategic heights, has become incidental in a world increasingly domi-
nated by overarching flows of goods, capital and people that reduce the places they
reach to pure logistic ports, and those they do not reach to mere distances that can
be overcome—possibly at the virtually infinite speed of global telematic networks.
Such “pulverisation of places” (Becattini 2015), which has always accompanied
phases of de-territorialisation (Magnaghi 2001), has become unprecedentedly per-
vasive, depositing seeds of de-contextualised modernity in every place on the planet,
disfiguring urban and rural landscapes by forcibly inserting metropolitan functions
in inner (rural, hilly or mountain) areas or condemning these areas to marginalisa-
tion, abandonment and degradation. Contemporary urbanisation, boundless, exces-
sive and serial, is characterised by morphotypes which are totally incongruent with
those that have stratified over time in historic cities: in fact we live in vast post-
urban areas for work, training, communication, commerce, consumption and lei-
sure. This means the spatial relationships which criss-cross these areas are
multi-scalar, ranging from the proximity of local neighbourhoods, to the urban and
This chapter is the translation of a condensed and updated version of the chapter Professor Alberto
Magnaghi wrote for La Regola e il Progetto, a collection of essays he edited, which was published
in 2014 by Florence University Press. This is the first English translation to be published and, in
accordance with the Open Access policy of Florence University Press, the Italian version is freely
available on the internet.
A. Magnaghi (*)
Architecture Department, Florence University, Florence, Italy
e-mail: alberto.magnaghi@unifi.it

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_3
34 A. Magnaghi
regional dimension of functional communities, to ethereal communications in

cyber-space.
Such transformations entail an anthropological mutation in the relationship
between human settlement and the environment, between functional geographies
(flows) and places (funds),1 and they increasingly reduce the reliability of the simple
interpretive (and design) model based on local urban/rural polarisation.2 This has
led me to conclude that a possible “return to the city” (8), a restoration of the posi-
tive and liberating meaning of urban, requires urbanity to be comprehensively rede-
signed (Bonora and Cervellati 2009), because its value has been dramatically
reduced to the mort de la ville envisaged by Françoise Choay (1994); such a rede-
sign should take into account both the urban, regional scale of the new geographic
dimension of living and the multi-scalar relationships generated by this new dimen-
sion, as well as the diverse relationships existing between the physical space of
places (limited, concrete, historic, local) and the intangible space of networks
(unlimited, virtual, instantaneous, global); the redesign should also attempt to rede-
fine the relationships between historic (urban and rural) settlement systems and
open spaces/built-up areas, and relationships between public spaces and their con-
nective fabric; the redesign should also regenerate the city by facilitating the devel-
opment of synergic relations with the surrounding territory and networks as well as
multiplying its centralities. The starting point of any such redesign project will be to
reinterpret the new forms of living that are incessantly generated by the diverse
morphologies of regional urbanisation.
If the issues raised by the strategic perspective of “returning to territory”3 are to
be considered, answers to the problems of contemporary living must be sought in
the relations generated by regional urbanisation at the complex territorial systems
scale, and their critical issues, challenges and opportunities should be addressed
through the concept of urban bioregion.
In this chapter, therefore, I have adopted the concept of bioregion to respond to
the intrinsically multi-scalar issues posed by the need to (re)define a potential rebal-
ancing of the relationship between human settlement and the environment, at the
geographical scale of today’s inhabiting territories, where it is possible to find tech-
nical solutions; I have introduced the adjective urban to take the challenge of global
urbanisation to its home ground, proposing that it be reconverted by reconstructing
the urbanity of places in a plural polycentric form, and by developing new synergic
1
Here “flows” and “funds” terms are used according to the meaning introduced by Georgescu-
Roegen (1976) referring to the explication and insights relating to the production process
development.
2
There have been several attempts to overcome this problem by redefining and vitalising mutual
support relationships between city and countryside: see e.g. Fanfani (2009); Magnaghi and Fanfani
(2010); Poli (2013, 2019); Ferraresi (2014).
3
For more information on the “four moves” involved in this “return to territory” see Magnaghi
(2013), § 4, and—more generally—the relevant issues of Scienze del Territorio (http://www.
fupress.net/index.php/SdT), a journal published by the Territorialist Society: 1–2 “Back to earth”
(2013–2014), 3 “Rebuilding the city” (2015), 4 “Reinhabiting the mountains” (2016), 6 “The new
common property economies of the territory” (2018).
The Territorialist Approach to Urban Bioregions 35
relations between the worlds of urban and rural life, starting with the denser fabrics
of metropolitan areas and intermediate post-metropolitan territories, and continuing
with the finer fabrics of hilly and mountainous areas. In other words, we need to
design the decomposition of the megacities and urban regions being built today so
they can be transformed into urban places, and to launch their reticular and poly-
centric recomposition into bioregional systems.
This process of re-conceptualising urban space in relation to its territory tends to
overcome futile anti-urban positions or, even worse, approaches that reduce design
action to spatial mitigation of contemporary urbanisation, intersecting the urban
fabric with cycle paths and compensatory parks. The problem of “returning to the
city” is, in fact, only partly a matter of morphological and environmental rebalanc-
ing; it is above all a matter of inhabitants reappropriating the power to determine
their living environments (polis, public spaces), powers they have lost through the
construction of increasingly global and a-spatial techno-financial machines, which
have transformed inhabitants into users and consumers.
In this alternative vision, the dichotomy between historic cities and contempo-
rary urbanisation can be addressed by using the paradigm of a self-governing urban
bioregion and applying it to an entire regional territory; in this way, the paradigm
becomes a conceptual tool that provides rules, methods and multidisciplinary tech-
niques for tackling an (socially produced) inhabitant-focused territorial project4 as
a contextual, interactive redevelopment of rural, urban, central, peripheral and mar-
ginal territories.
2 Definition of Urban Bioregion
Urban bioregion is the appropriate conceptual reference for a territorial project

which is designed to integrate the economic (referred to the local territorial system),
political (self-government of inhabited areas and work places), environmental (ter-
ritorial ecosystem) and living (functional and inhabited areas of a group of cities,
towns and villages) components of a socio-territorial system that pursues a
4
The three terms figuring in the Italian version of this expression, progetto, abitanti and territorio,
present an intricate translation problem which is also a cultural and scientific issue: progetto covers
the meaning of both the English words “project” and “design”; abitanti designates something
halfway between “inhabitants”, “residents”, “citizens” and “dwellers”; territorio has virtually
nothing to do with its “natural” translation “territory”, since the latter indicates the extension of a
domination or a species range, whereas the former—at least in its territorialist sense—is conceived
as the result of the coevolutionary interactions between environmental frameworks and human
actions in a long-term historical perspective. The choices here adopted try to roughly reproduce in
English the same areas of determination and indeterminacy detectable in Italian; in particular:
“design” prevails over “project” whenever a “draw” meaning is primarily involved; “dwellers” is
always used as an abbreviation for “who lives there”; the plural form “territories”, or the adjectival
“territorial”, replaces “territory” when a confusion with its other, ordinary sense may occur
[Translator’s note].
36 A. Magnaghi
coevolutionary balance between human settlement and the environment, re-

establishing new forms of the long-term relationships between city and countryside
that tend “towards territorial fairness” (Madec 2012).
The territorial dimension of an urban bioregion is not pre-defined. Whatever the
context, this dimension depends on what is required to develop the four components
that identify the urban bioregion in question and on the complexity of the physical
environments required to synergically integrate its functioning. Depending on
which of the components is most dominant, an urban bioregion may be the size of a
local territorial system (or SLoT, see Dematteis 2001), a district system (Becattini
2009), a water catchment (Nebbia 2012), a coastal system with its hinterland, an
urban region (Dalmasso 1972), a landscape setting (Poli 2012) and so on; this dem-
onstrates that characterising a bioregion’s identity and landscape depends on several
factors: accessibility; functional, urban and ecological complexity; the presence of
distinct physiographical, hydrographical and landscape systems; the relationships
between coastal and inland areas; the interactions between plains and hill or moun-
tain valley systems; the presence of orographic nodes and river valleys, urban, infra-
structural and rural systems and so on; this brings to mind the environmental and
cultural complexity of Patrick Geddes’ “valley section” (1915).
As part of territorial governance, each urban bioregion should develop an inter-
pretive planning tool for minimum spatial and landscape planning units within a
vast regional area (holistic criteria should be used to identify these units), so as to
integrate the governance of housing, economic-productive, infrastructural, land-
scape, environmental and identity functions. The strategies of the regional spatial/
landscape plan should, therefore, focus on enhancing the unique identities of every
urban bioregion within the region.
This definition of bioregion represents a semantic and conceptual evolution from
earlier definitions: when the term was first used, it had a definite ecological empha-
sis: this is particularly noticeable in the reflections, based on concrete experiments,
made by the Todd and Todd (1984) and, in particular, by Kirkpatrick Sale (1985),
who defined the deeper meaning of bioregionalism as referring to “a region gov-
erned by nature”. The social dimension of the bioregion is already apparent in stud-
ies conducted by the American Peter Berg who, in his Green City Program (1987),
wrote that cities were dominated by consumerism and needed to become more
responsible and develop reciprocal relations with the rest of their bioregion, in order
to create social units in which bioregional citizens would be able to understand and
control decisions concerning their life.
A more socio-ecological and municipal view, put forward by Murray Bookchin
(1989), focused on the problems of communities self-governing their living envi-
ronment as essential to the very existence of the bioregion; this viewpoint was later
developed by Serge Latouche (2006) who studied the bio-economy of degrowth,
achieved by adopting different life, production and consumption styles.
In addition to these “humanistic” contributions, the “territorialist” sense of bio-
region makes a direct reference to the ecological geography studies undertaken by
Vidal De la Blache (2008) and to the work of the Regional Planning Association of
America (MacKaye 1928); in particular, as already mentioned, it refers to Patrick
Geddes’ bio-anthropocentric definition of “valley section” (1915), especially where

he puts the peculiar features of the hydrogeomorphological structure of river basins
in a coevolutionary relationship with specific productive cultures and lifestyles.
Finally, the bioregion is also inspired by Lewis Mumford’s “human region” (1961).
To ensure the territorial project is based on the concept of bioregion, we have
reinterpreted the relevant Geddesian principles by:
• Reaffirming the principle of coevolution between place, work and inhabit-
ants (folk)
• Promoting the specific and unique identity (uniqueness) of every region and
each city
• Implementing long-term analyses (reliefs and contours) to discover the coevolu-
tionary (natural and cultural) relations “at work” in each region
• Highlighting the long-lasting coevolutionary principles that emanate from these
relationships (regional origins) as a guide to discovering the (genetic and trans-
formation) invariant rules which, over time, make it possible to reproduce the
bioregion’s identity characteristics
The concept of “coevolution” (which refers to our methodological work on long-
term territorialisation processes—see Magnaghi 2001) prevents the concept of bio-
region from drifting towards determinism,5 where human settlements are considered
to be entirely dependent on their environmental framework (this tendency is pres-
ent, for example, in the Chicago School’s idea of the “city as an organism”); the
coevolutionary process interprets the environmental rules using appropriate cultural
mediation (Berque 2000, 2010), so a “place” is neither nature nor culture, but the
fruit of a dynamic relationship between both components. Recent territorialist re-
elaborations of these concepts, have provided an ecological slant to economic doc-
trines (Georgescu-Roegen 1966; Bonaiuti 2004); they also take into account Claudio
Saragosa’s definition of territorial ecosystem, which remodels the concept of “terri-
tory” so it is similar to the concept of “environment” (Saragosa 2005), and redefines
the relational dynamics of human settlement, especially in cities, here reinterpreted
as Biopolis, the city of life (Saragosa 2011).
These re-elaborations also refer to the theories of autopoiesis of living systems
(Maturana and Varela 1984) and to the work of Christopher Alexander (2002) on the
structures of living beings in an extensive sense, especially where he evaluates the
quality of architecture, city and territories according to their “degree of life”;
Alexander adopts the theory of expansion, recurrence, interaction and overlapping
of “centres” and their properties (“field of organized forces”), to propose an optimi-
sation of the settlement system as a deployment of the dynamic rules of life.
I have incorporated these conceptual advances in my detailed definition of an
urban bioregion:
5
See e.g. Berg (2002): “a bioregion is defined in terms of the unique overall pattern of natural
characteristics that are found in a specific place. […] People are also considered as an integral
aspect of a place’s life”.
38 A. Magnaghi
An urban bioregion is a local territorial system characterised by:

(a) the existence of a plurality of urban and rural centres, organised into reticular and
non-hierarchical systems of small and medium-size cities; each city has a unique, synergic
and multifunctional connection with its own rural territory for the production of ecosystem
services;
(b) the existence of complex and differentiated hydrogeomorphological and environ-
mental systems, related in coevolutionary and synergic forms with the urban settlement and
the agro-forestry system. These coevolutionary relations, when related to the scale of a
water catchment, a low-land system with its valleys, a coastal system with its hinterland and
so on, characterise lifestyles and their quality, identity and heritage characteristics, sustain-
able ecosystem balances and the capacity of a place to self-reproduce.
An urban bioregion is a local territorial system equipped with forms of self-government
that are designed to make the system self-sustainable and to promote the well-being of its
inhabitants and, to this end, they activate local production systems based on the enhance-
ment of long-lasting heritage resources (environmental, territorial, landscape, socio-cultural
common goods) and encourage environmental policies aimed at the local closure of water,
waste, food, and energy cycles.
An urban bioregion, in which every large city or “cluster” of small and medium cities is
in ecological, productive and social equilibrium with its own territory, is an alternative to
the strength and power of a metropolis: indeed urban bioregions are more powerful than
metropolitan centre-periphery systems and diffused post-metropolitan systems because
they produce more durable wealth by enhancing and networking their “peripheral” nodes in
multi-polar exchanges; moreover, the creation of dimensional, relational and ecological
balances within these polycentric territorial components, reduces congestion, environmen-
tal emergencies, pollution, external diseconomies, waste of energy and agricultural land,
unnecessary mobility of people and goods; in this way bioregions help reduce the ecologi-
cal footprint, namely the unsustainability caused by withdrawing resources from distant
impoverished regions.
In this coevolutionary vision of the relationships between human settlement and

the environment, bioregional territories assume the characteristics of a “highly com-
plex living system” (Capra 1996; Magnaghi 2005) and, as such, are similar to auto-
poietic systems in which “environment and living organisms coevolve” (Maturana
and Varela 1984) as part of a dynamic process, in which permanent features and
structural changes induced by environmental perturbations ensure their self-repro-
duction as the autopoietic network “continuously reproduces itself”.
In this sense, an urban bioregion is first and foremost an interpretative tool that
can be used to evaluate, address and define the specific characteristics of degrada-
tion present in widely diffused post-urban urbanisation. The bioregional approach
tackles these problems by assigning a central role in the territorial project, designed
to promote self-sustainability, to the multifunctional redesign of open spaces (agro-
forestry, riverside, natural areas) and by entrusting the redesign of complex networks
of urban centralities with the all-important task of reshaping urbanity and self-
government as they provide guidelines for differentiating territorial configurations
and for retrieving the complexity and richness of their relations.
Indeed, a system of bioregions linked by supportive federal government net-
works facilitates the evolution of social-territorial relations, from the hierarchical
systems typical of the globalisation paradigm, towards criteria of complementarity,
synergy and cooperation among local self-determined systems (Thayer 2003); these
local systems should produce a “competitive” advantage, not only in terms of
environmental equilibrium and well-being, but also for the long-lasting, self-
sustainable generation of wealth through forms of “grassroots” globalisation.
3 esigning the Urban Bioregion: A Glossary

D
of “Construction Elements” and Their Rules
at the Regional Scale
The methodological approach to urban bioregion requires the component sectorial

elements to be recomposed in an integrated discipline that is suitable for redefining
the basic elements of the territorial project, both in the elaboration of “treatise” rules
which aim to ensure the reproduction and innovation of spatial structures, and in
“modelling” design applications which exemplify their features. At both levels, it is
multi-sectoral integration that ensures method effectiveness: each sectoral element
of the territorial project must satisfy the treaty’s multi-sectoral rules (e.g. those
applicable to the hydrogeological, ecological, settlement and agro-forestry fields),
and every sectoral rule has to be applied to all elements of the territorial project. As
we have seen, these elements refer to both the needs and creative and operational
fields of human activities (necessitas, commoditas and concinnitas for Alberti) and
to built artefacts (the Vitruvian categories of firmitas, utilitas and venustas). In both
cases, it is the relationship between the components that allows design visions and
options to be consistent with each and every component and to also create synergies
for the integrated project.6
The dialogic principle needs to be applied to ensure the components and their
goals are properly embedded within the integrated project. This principle, which
Françoise Choay (2004) ascribes to Leon Battista Alberti, affirms that buildings
cannot be constructed without a dialogue with those for whom the building is
intended, be they private individuals, communities of family members or members
of the res publica. This principle becomes increasingly meaningful when it is
updated to include not only buildings but also cities and territories as places of con-
temporary living, which assume the value of a common good to which the various
forms of participatory active citizenship should be applied.
The inclusion of these new areas within the territorial project update and redefine
the above-mentioned “classical” categories and connect them to issues related to
6
An example: There are many possible solutions for reducing hydraulic risk in a river system sec-
tion: some solutions such as collectors, river-bank rectification and artificial flood-expansion
basins, are effective in that particular section, but they increase the run-off speed downstream, they
do not fix the problem upstream, and, above all, they negatively impact other river system func-
tions (e.g. riverside agriculture, river fruition, river landscape and the quality of ecological corri-
dors); it is only by linking the objective of risk reduction with other objectives of the territorial
project that it is possible to make sectorial choices (such as upstream water retention, rolling tanks,
natural engineering works, etc.) that interact positively with other sectors, thereby raising the qual-
ity of life within the territory as a whole, as well as within that specific sector.
40 A. Magnaghi
contemporary urbanisation such as: the hydro-geomorphological balance in water

catchment areas and the quality of ecological networks within the regional territory
as a whole, including the environmental quality of urban spaces (firmitas, necessi-
tas); the regional re-balancing of settlement and urban systems, aimed at improving
habitat, production and consumption quality, can be achieved by redefining the
mutual relationships between city and countryside, by increasing the complexity
and morpho-typological differentiation of city networks and by recreating urbanity
within urban centres (utilitas, commoditas). Further improvements can be made by
redefining landscape quality in relation to the inhabitants’ living environments and
to the recent heightened awareness of rural and urban landscapes (venustas,
concinnitas).
The bioregion also has its generative rules and its basic elements—I call these
“construction” elements, to use the metaphor of a building: foundations, walls,
floors and a roof.7 The construction elements of a bioregion have socio-cultural,
political, environmental, productive, urban and landscape characteristics and they
are inspired by the above-mentioned treatises and statutory rules. Rules, construc-
tion elements and their synergies (building methods and techniques, territorial and
urban metabolism) represent the design guide, the “treatise” required to address
territorial projects in bioregional terms. In this paragraph, I will extend the building
metaphor as to include a “building-territory” which covers a vast area, in order to
describe the main “construction elements” of urban bioregions, highlighting their
role and the “compositional” rules of the design process. The construction elements
are summarised in the “glossary” below.
3.1 erritorial and Landscape Cultures and Knowledge

T
as “Cognitive Foundations” of the Bioregion
The bioregional design “lays” its foundation using local cultures as cognitive mate-
rials: long-lasting socio-cultural models, craftsmanship, artistic, environmental, ter-
ritorial and landscape care expertise all provide tools for interpreting the relationships
between nature and culture that are required to produce territory. The first “con-
struction element” of a future bioregion is a multifaceted corpus of environmental
and territorial knowledge emanating from the long historical development of that
territory, which, over time, characterises its unique landscape and identity. The
study of territorialisation processes (Raffestin 1980; Magnaghi 2001; Turco 2010;
Fig. 1) identifies the invariant features of environmental and building knowledge
7
The metaphor of building construction elements is useful, at the regional scale, for reframing
relationships among the various design elements: very often, the territorial project underlying con-
temporary urbanisation, builds walls and the roof (diffuse and pervasive buildings, mega-infra-
structures, etc.) but completely ignores the foundations (hydrogeomorphological and ecological
balances) until it is too late, at which point emergency policies (usually extremely costly) are
required.
Fig. 1 Diagram of the “TDR” process: territorialisation – deterritorialisation – reterritorialisation.

(Source: Magnaghi 2001)
and expertise that are laid down in cognitive and material sediments: territorial
structures and landscapes that go beyond a single civilisation and represent the
long-term heritage of a place (Marson 2016).
Recently developed disciplines can make important contributions to tracing
regional origins: for instance, global archaeology (Brogiolo 2007, Volpe 2008),
which shifts attention from single archaeological sites to historical territories and
their stages of civilisation, and historical geography and ecology (Moreno 1990;
Cevasco and Moreno 2013, Quaini 2011), which adopt local multi-disciplinary sur-
veys to reconstruct the coevolutive relations between human settlement and systems
that activate and use environmental resources.
Systematising the knowledge obtained from historical territorial projects helps
select the rules and activities that, in the settlement models typical of each civilisa-
tion, produce an enhancement of territorial heritage in the bioregion, defining the
development “style” and uniqueness of a place; evolutionary rules also guide us in
the quantitative and qualitative selection of which activities to introduce: this is a
chapter on the “statute of places” that highlights structural invariants and long-
lasting reproductive rules (Magnaghi 2017), thereby making it possible to specify
requirements for production activities (what, how and where to produce in order to
increase soil fertility, social and human capital, local entrepreneurship, the self-
reproductive ability of environmental systems and the heritage value of landscapes
and built-up areas) and for settlement models (locations, dimensions, morphotypes,
building materials and techniques, as well as environmental and energy balances),
42 A. Magnaghi
in order to implement transformations that enable heritage values to be increased

rather than reduced; evolutionary rules [non sono sicura che questo sia il soggetto]
guide the formulation of statutory rules based on the enhancement of territorial heri-
tage, which is recognised as a collective good (common) and as the material basis
for a durable production of wealth (Figs. 2 and 3a–c).
3.2 nvironmental Frameworks as the “Material Foundation”

E
of Settlements
High quality ecological networks and water catchments with a healthy hydro-
geomorphological balance are the material preconditions for the existence of urban
bioregions (firmitas), just as environmental and territorial knowledge, read in terms
of heritage, are their cultural preconditions (Fig. 4).
A healthy hydro-geomorphological balance cannot be achieved with small-scale
end-of-pipe projects (typical of the culture in our machine-oriented civilisation), nor
with Sisyphus-type efforts of ex post repairs after floods and other environmental
disasters; it requires the revival of a hydraulic civilisation which exerts cross-
sectorial influence on the various actions of territory production, embedding the
problem of hydraulic and water balance within the ars aedificandi. This methodol-
ogy postulates that geo-pedological structures affect layout, location, the boundar-
ies and forms of settlements and that water catchment areas represent the primary
geographic environment in which to achieve a healthy production, conservation and
balance of resources (especially water) essential for life reproduction. Recognising
this primary function would restore strength to water catchment areas as physio-
graphic entities with a housing, productive, administrative and political identity; it
would also help to rebuild collective identities in valleys and coastal hinterlands,
and to reconsider cities located on floodplains as “outposts” of the deep valley sys-
tems, of which they are an historical expression, “outposts” which reconnect the
mountains to the plains and to the sea in a network of synergic relationships.
As regards our understanding of ecological balances, current ecological network
designs mostly focus on protecting biodiversity in ecosystems (be they mountain,
agro-pastoral, river, coastal, etc.), in order to defend them from settlement systems
which tend to consume land, isolate open spaces, and fragment ecological networks
and corridors. This repairing-compensating role of sectorial environmental design
does nothing to undermine the generative rules of contemporary urbanisation which
incessantly produce environmental degradation. This makes it necessary to include
the design component of the ecological network within the generative design rules.
A regional ecological network should therefore comprise a corpus of rules internal
to bioregional design that ensure conditions of ecosystem continuity within the
entire regional territory. The ecosystem should include agricultural land as a “sec-
ondary ecological network” with varying levels of ecological value, and urban areas
Fig. 2 Diagram of the bioregional design process. (Source: A. Magnaghi 2018 and author’s
elaboration)
44 A. Magnaghi
Fig. 3 Representations of territorial heritage: (a) Val di Cornia, Italy. Material prepared for a
National Research Council funded project: “Territorial Laboratories in Val di Cornia” (map by
A. Magnaghi and D. Fantini 1998). (b) Heritage map for the Territorial Coordination Plan of the
Province of Prato (map by A. Magnaghi, 2003). Prato Province: Public open access SIT image
file:///C:/Users/Acer/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$DIa0.445/qc15b_a.pdf. Accessed 19 April 2019.
(c) Territorial heritage of Central Tuscany. (Source: Magnaghi and Fanfani 2010)
Fig. 4 The material foundations of the Milan urban bioregion: (a) an interpretive map of environ-
mental systems; (b) a design synthesis map showing environmental systems and the pattern of
reticular settlement. (Source: Magnaghi-IRER 1995)
as critical zones requiring treatment to ensure ecological corridor continuity and

quality.
A precondition of settlement system quality in bioregional design is that the
ecological quality of environmental systems must be raised throughout the regional
territory; this is mostly achieved through multi-purpose territorial eco-networks
(Malcevschi 2010; Fig. 5a, b) which ensure biodiversity, connectivity and complex-
ity, multi-functionality of the ecological network and connecting corridors as well
as bioregional metabolic recovery of water, waste, energy and food cycles.
3.3 rban Centralities and Their Polycentric

U
Settlement Systems
The network of city constellations is the morpho-typological element which gener-

ates urban bioregion settlement, the alternative to hierarchical centre-
periphery models.
The growth of an urban bioregion, as a highly complex living system, depends
largely on the structure and relational systems of its urban centres. In an interaction
of multiscalar and polycentric relationships that revitalise the complexity of historic
urban armours and their genetic, invariant, transformative rules, an urban bioregion
46 A. Magnaghi
Fig. 5 Ecological networks: (a) Reconnecting the ecological network in Central Tuscany. (Source:
Magnaghi and Fanfani 2010). (b) Master plan for the multipurpose ecological network in Puglia
Region Landscape Plan. (Source: Magnaghi 2010). Puglia Region Territorial Landscape Plan
(PPTR) Regione Puglia, Section Landscape Protection and Enhancement, (License Italian Open
Data License-IODL). http://paesaggio.regione.puglia.it/PPTR_2015/4_Lo%20scenario%20strate-
gico/4.2_Tavole/4.2.1_La%20Rete%20Ecologica_Regionale/4.2.1.2_Schema%20Direttore%20
della%20Rete%20Ecologica%20Polivalente.jpg. Accessed April 19, 2019
consists of inhabited countryside (scattered rural buildings, hamlets, farms, farm-

villa systems, farmhouses, rural ecovillages), cities of villages (eco-neighbourhoods)
and networks of cities connected by complex grids of infrastructural corridors
(roads, railways, rivers, paths, bridleways, bicycle tracks, telematic networks). The
more the functions of each centre of this multipolar system have their own specific
identity and differ from the other centres, and the more the mutual relations among
the centres increase, the stronger each centre will become. Strengthening the poly-
centric system requires the identity, function and morphological differences of each
centre to be reinforced; complementary relations among the centres also need to be
reinforced. The system of centres with its rules of dynamic equilibrium becomes the
ordering principle of the vitality of the bioregion in its appropriate relationships
with the environment.
This means the design principles of a bioregional settlement system have to
respond to two contrasting requirements: the need to strengthen the identity of each
node in the network, without which multipolar relationships cannot develop, and the
need to avoid this reinforcement disrupting the dynamic equilibrium between cen-
tres, so the system does not veer towards a hierarchical system of relations where
dependency relationships develop between peripheral centres and the central city.
Maintaining this delicate balance depends on rules that control urban dimensions by
qualifying urban growth. The revision of the structural invariants of historic settle-
ments allows urban scale and dimension to be defined in relation to: accessibility
and proximity to public spaces; the minimum functional complexity required to
guarantee a high ranking and exchanges with the regional network of cities; acces-
sible services and temporal viability of soft mobility networks; reduction of func-
tional mobility (jobs, consumption, goods, leisure); reproductive balance of the
urban metabolism (water, food, waste, energy cycles); sustainability of the ecologi-
cal footprint; multifunctional relations between city and countryside (balance and
synergic exchange between open spaces and built-up areas, redefinition of urban
fringes). These rules must be applied to both the level of the single urban node (cit-
ies of villages), and of the territorial network (cities of cities, networks of cities).
3.3.1 Cities of Villages (Ecopolis)
The metaphor of village (Magnaghi 1990; Kohr 1976; Krier 1984, Madec, cit. 2012;
Friedman 1975, 2003) allows us to identify the minimum unit of aggregates that
integrate social, community, economic and environmental elements. It is the system
of these urban nuclei, connected in polycentric networks, which founds “Ecopolis”
(Ferraresi 1992), “the urban village” (Friedman 1975; Magnaghi 2005), the éco-
quartier (Madec, cit. 2012), the bidonvillage (Friedman, cit. 1975) and Biopolis
(Saragosa, cit. 2011); once founded, each village is supported by a reconstruction of
the network of public spaces as places of proximity and conviviality, fuelled by
more participatory democratic forms (Magnaghi 2005); by the specialisation and
complementarity of rare services and by housing typologies that define the func-
tional, social and generational mix of each nucleus within the urban system, by
48 A. Magnaghi
implementing access to the distributive networks; by the reticular reorganisation of

public transport with vast urban areas being reserved for pedestrians; by developing
complex, interconnected local production activities; by adopting relative dense set-
tlement morphotypes.
In contemporary urbanisation, the objective of the urban decomposition and
reconstruction process is to recreate and rebuild public spaces by reconfiguring the
role of intermediate areas between city and countryside through new agreements
which implement the functions listed above.
3.3.2 Cities of Cities
At the bioregional scale, cities of villages make up the non-hierarchical mosaic of

the cities of cities, founding the quality of city networks on the resistant pattern of
historic settlement morphotypes.8
Interlocal networks (Camagni 1993; Bonavero et al. 1999; Davoudi 2003;
Magnaghi and Marson 2004; Magnaghi 2017a) were developed with the strategic
purpose of moving away from the centre-periphery model at the regional scale. This
move enhances the uniqueness of the settlements within the territorial systems that
make up the region and exalts their polycentric, federal, reticular vocation. The
enhancement of the system’s peripheral and marginal nodes (the multipolar distri-
bution of network-connected rare services), so as to increase the relational, non-
hierarchical complexity of the urban bioregional system, produces complexity,
productive excellence and integrated supply chains in each territorial network node.
The functional polarisation of diffuse peripheral conurbations identifies rules to
prevent sprawl and the consumption of agricultural land: these rules make it possi-
ble to clearly define boundaries and to monitor the quality of urban fringes to safe-
guard the bioregional environmental balance (Fig. 6a, b).
3.4 roduction Systems That Enhance the Value

P
of Bioregional Heritage
The bioregional paradigm makes it possible to reframe the relationship between

territorial heritage and the local production system in an innovative manner. In
industrial districts, Marshall’s concept of “industrial atmosphere” evokes the rela-
tionship between system productivity and local social and environmental endow-
ments (natural and cultural resources, household structures, etc.). With the
emergence of local development theories, though, the concept of territory (and
8
In Italy and Europe, the historical urban armour of small and medium-sized cities has a generative
force which is extraordinary for its quality and diffusion (Braudel 1979): in Italy, in particular, this
makes it possible to largely found the settlement design of an urban bioregion by revitalising his-
torical city morphotypes, the backbone of different civilisations over time (Bevilacqua 2017).
Fig. 6 (a) The polycentric nature of urban bioregions: a. the city of cities of Val Bormida, Italy
(map by A. Magnaghi and C. Vitone, 2000, by courtesy of the authors). (b) the polycentric settle-
ment system of Central Tuscany. (Source: Tuscany Regional Landscape Plan, 2015). Open Access
SIT. http://www.regione.toscana.it/-/piano-di-indirizzo-territoriale-con-valenza-di-piano-paesag-
gistico. Accessed April 19, 2019
50 A. Magnaghi
territoriality) goes beyond providing environmental support to industrial production

to become a complex identity system which determines a two-way, dynamic, self-
reproducing relationship with a local production system capable of generating
“added value for the region” (Dematteis 2001). More recently, the concept that
places can be characterised by their “productive chorality” (Becattini 2015a) allows
territorial9 socio-environmental characteristics to be integrated in a more complex
fashion with the production system operating within territorial confines; merchan-
dise specificity and productivity of the system is attributed to a historical-
anthropological characterisation of local society, which, as a whole, affects
“individual decisions including economic ones”. This restores lifestyles, in their
identity relationship with the local system, to the centre of the objectives of the
production system. The “territory of inhabitants” (Le Lannou 1963; Magnaghi
1998) rises again and regains supremacy over the territory of producers; the territo-
rial principle prevails over the functional principle (Olivetti 1945).
The production components of an urban bioregion also represent a testing ground
for the ecological conversion of the economy (Viale 2011), which, in making the
production system coherent with the enhancement of local knowledge and social
contexts, with the reproduction of environmental systems and with the production
of ecosystem services, brings it closer to satisfying bioregionalist requirements. But
for the bioregion to be properly implemented, the production system must also:
• develop place-based economic systems that reproduce their own life cycle,
thereby drastically reducing dependence on sources outside the region and their
ecological footprint;
• develop production activities that enhance the value of specific qualities of
unique territorial heritage in each bioregion, be they material (rivers, coasts,
mountains, fertile soils, agricultural facilities, forests, infrastructure, cities and
so on) or immaterial (productive and artistic cultures, milieu, civic networks,
lifestyles, environmental knowledge and competence…).
In such a system of requirements, the bioregional approach helps to establish
what to produce, how to produce it and in what quantity, thereby giving a voice to
economic and social actors who use innovation to improve the care of heritage val-
ues as common goods, through processes of extended governance and the develop-
ment of participatory democratic institutions and productive self-reliance.
9
forse local oppure regional al posto di territorial?
3.5 ocal Energy Resources for Bioregional

L
Self-Reproduction
It is essential for local energy systems that settlement, urban and building systems
are constructed in such a way as to ensure low energy consumption and high energy
efficiency; furthermore, local energy needs to be produced from renewable sources
that are consistent with the enhancement of bioregional and landscape heritage.
This line of reasoning can be extended to urban morphotypes with low energy con-
sumption and high-level climatic resilience (Fanfani and Fagarazzi 2012; Los, cit.
2007); in the presence of widely diffused production networks and a well-managed
renewable sources mix, these urban morphotypes can revitalise the bioclimatic
character of historical cities.
Developing an appropriate renewable energy mix requires careful analysis of
local energy resource potential: every bioregion has its own particular energy poten-
tial associated with natural patrimonial assets (sun, tides, rivers, lakes, geothermal,
wind energy) and local assets (canals, mills, artificial reservoirs, biomass from for-
ests, cultivated fields and usable surfaces—roofs of industrial, residential and com-
mercial buildings, car parks—urban waste, production waste, agricultural non-food
production, etc.). Appropriate technological assistance and a precise combination of
these resources provide a unique bioregional energy mix that makes the entire bio-
region productive in a way that is consistent with the enhancement of territorial
heritage (Van Dobbelsteen et al. 2008).
Local energy systems therefore, have the following objectives:
a. to switch from exogenous, centralised and privatised energy production to energy self-
sufficiency and bioregional sovereignty by allowing local communities to valorise the widely
diffused and integrated system of their local resources;
b. to remove the critical environmental, territorial and landscape issues arising from policies
which deploy massive facilities to maximise the economic exploitation of single resources; to
introduce dimensional, typological and technological standards appropriate to the particular
mix of facilities used, to ensure long-lasting value enhancement of local assets; to increase the
value of resources by blocking the consumption of agricultural land for new buildings and
energy installations, by upgrading the energy efficiency of existing buildings and settlements
and by reducing energy consumption;
c. to bring energy production sites closer to consumption sites so as to shorten supply chains,
ensure highly reproducible energy supplies, reduce transport distances and minimise dispersion
within the network; this will reduce the need for large distribution networks and the hierarchical
systems, typical of large facilities, will be replaced by network systems (smart grids), better
suited to the widely-diffused integrated systems of small and medium-sized facilities (Magnaghi
and Sala 2013)
d. to recover/further develop urban metabolism and climate control qualities by designing biocli-
matic cities”.
52 A. Magnaghi
3.6 Agro-forestry Structures and Their Multifunctional Values
The bioregional approach involves a radical change in how design methodologies

consider the relationship between built-up areas and open spaces (agro-forestry sys-
tems, water catchments, fallow or abandoned areas, parks, biotopes); this approach
defines new mutual relationships between urban and rural areas as a strength for
redeveloping regional urban systems, and it uses the multifunctional values of open
spaces (particularly agro-forestry areas) as a design base: the historical functions of
hydrogeological protection, ecological balance, urban food supply, landscape frui-
tion and hospitality production are thereby returned to these areas in an updated
form. The bioregional approach also promotes new supply chains which work
towards the local closure of food, water, energy and waste cycles. A new agreement
between city and countryside (Magnaghi and Fanfani, cit. 2010) supports the reor-
ganisation of contemporary urbanised areas, breaking down their urbanised con-
tinuum and re-aggregating their urban centralities with their agro-forestry areas
using periurban agricultural areas as a filter. This process of urban decomposition
and recomposition relocates and reorganises the fragments of metropolitan
degrowth—from urban to rural villages and hamlets, to the inhabited countryside—
within the bioregional paradigm (Fig. 7).
Fig. 7 Representation of the agreement between city and countryside in the Puglia Regional
Landscape Plan. (Source: Magnaghi 2010). Puglia Region Territorial Landscape Plan PPTR),
Landscape Protection and Enhancement Section (License Italian Open Data License-IODL).
http://paesaggio.regione.puglia.it/PPTR_2015/4_Lo%20scenario%20strategico/4.2_
Tavole/4.2.2_patto_citta'_campagna.jpg. Accessed April 19, 2019
Fig. 8 Two shared bioregional scenarios for the Province of Prato: (a) Initial vision of the prov-
ince’s territorial systems and vocations. (b) “Integrated projects” for the Territorial coordination
plan of the Province of Prato. (Source: Magnaghi 2003). Prato Province Public Open Access SIT
image. file:///C:/Users/Acer/AppData/Local/Temp/Rar$DIa0.849/p02.pdf. Accessed 19
April, 2019
3.6.1 Producing Urban Quality: Urban and Periurban Agriculture
The number of urban and periurban gardens, orchards and vegetable gardens is
rapidly increasing in metropolis, in areas that were once “awaiting urbanisation” or
are now unexploited. The revival of these abandoned and degraded areas provides a
buffer against expanding urbanisation and also defines new standards for green
agriculture within urban suburbs. This agriculture has many functions: it provides
food and leisure activities; it plays a role in environmental and microclimatic com-
pensation and promotes high-quality redevelopment of the urban fringe; projects for
reconnecting enclosed urban agricultural areas with the periurban agricultural belt
adopt “blue and green threads”—cycle paths, tree-lined lanes and canals—to define
city limits and reconnect urban public spaces with agricultural land (“green hands
on the city”, Donadieu 2012), thereby redefining the landscape quality of the latter
(Poli 2013; Fig. 8).
54 A. Magnaghi
3.6.2 roducing Environmental Balances and Ecosystem Services:

P
Multifunctional Agricultural Parks
Multifunctional agricultural parks (or multifunctional agriculture tout court) restore

the ecological functions of environmental protection and balance, historically
assigned to agriculture, and they produce integrated ecosystem services (Rovai et al.
2010). These services provide support (reproduction of soil fertility, reorganisation
of water distribution), regulation (conservation of agricultural land, water purifica-
tion, natural habitat maintenance, hydrogeomorphological and microclimatic regu-
lation), supplies (food production for bioregional cities with the development of
local food-supply chains, biomass energy for the local energy mix), cultural ser-
vices (maintenance and restoration of historical landscapes) and production of com-
mon goods (aesthetic quality of the landscape, access to and use of agricultural
territory by city dwellers, multifunctional reuse of historic farm infrastructure for
rural tourism and direct food and cultural exchanges). As a secondary ecological
network, these multifunctional agricultural parks allow for the maintenance of bio-
diversity and ecological corridors; they also help mitigate climate change and reduce
the ecological footprint (by facilitating a regional closure of water, waste, energy
and food cycles); in fact these parks become the ordering principle of bioregional
settlement and its infrastructure system (Ferraresi 2014; Fig. 9).
Fig. 9 An urban bioregion for the Florence Metropolitan Area (map by D. Poli and A. Magnaghi.
2018) (By courtesy of the authors. Unpublished research undertaken on behalf of the Metropolitan
City of Florence)
3.6.3 istoric Rural Landscapes and Production of Knowledge

H
for Climate Change
Historical rural landscapes represent a patrimonial concentrate of “wise” rules for

producing and regenerating territories (Agnoletti 2013), and as such are able to
contribute rules and knowledge to the drawing up of “territorial statutes” (or “terri-
tory statutes”) and assist in overcoming the diseconomies of current agro-industrial
models, help address climate change, the long-term environmental effects of which
are currently operating, devastating and partially irreversible: desertification, vio-
lent floods, landslides, cyclones, melting of polar ice caps, rising seas, etc.; phenom-
ena which are also accompanied by a growing scarcity of food and cultivable areas
and by the exponential increase of environmental refugees. Historical rural land-
scapes can, therefore, represent the patrimonial nuclei which support retro-
innovation processes (Stuiver 2006) aimed at addressing climate change issues by
retrieving functions for enhancing valuable agricultural areas and redeveloping met-
ropolitan areas and by mobilising the expertise of mountain communities (forest
management, terracing techniques, water retention and regulation, etc.).
3.6.4 Revival of the Peasant Mode of Production and Rural Repopulation
The essential characteristics of traditional (Cevasco 2007) and neo-peasant agricul-

ture present many of the elements required for bioregional design: production for
personal use (not market dependent), of the system’s reproductive resources (“peas-
ant mode of production”, van der Ploeg 2008); ecologically complex production;
complex polyculture; hydrogeological protection; tendential local closure of envi-
ronmental cycles; locally based economic production (local food-supply chains for
food quality, forms of mutual aid and fair, non-monetary exchanges of produce);
preservation of local identities and so on; when put into a system, these elements are
the principles of agro-ecology (Gliessman 2014). The ongoing processes of revital-
ising peasant knowledge are already capable of triggering processes—weak, but
qualitatively important—of rural repopulation (Canale and Ceriani 2013; Dematteis,
cit. 2011) that contrast the long wave of planetary urbanisation processes; these
processes should, therefore, be strengthened as an essential basis for the construc-
tion of urban bioregions.
56 A. Magnaghi
3.7 tructures for Self-Government and Social Production

S
of Territory
The “construction elements” of urban bioregion I have described cannot be deployed

in territorial policies unless there is a definite transition towards forms of self-
government: the very definition of a bioregion makes it impossible for production,
culture, consumption and information to take place in a hetero-directed bioregion.
3.7.1 From Participation to Social Production of Territories
Throughout history, participation has resulted in technicians providing some sort of

support to dwellers in developing claims, projects and forms of self-realisation and
solidarity. Sometimes this participation has been negative: a mere creation of artifi-
cial consensus for pre-defined projects. In both cases, inhabitants are unable to mas-
ter the cultures and means of production of their own neighbourhood, city, territory:
they do not know where their light, water and food come from, or where their waste
goes; in many cases, inhabitants no longer know who they work for. In the biore-
gion, the roles of inhabitant and producer merge together in urban and rural areas to
outline a process which evolves from “participation” towards “social (co)produc-
tion of territories” (in an economic system which reduces wage labour, enhances
diffuse individual entrepreneurship and mutual relationships and expands the ter-
tiary sector). This process also requires urban policies to evolve from conservation
(of old towns, landscape, environment) to the activation of reterritorialisation pro-
cesses: restrictions, rules and limits are still needed, but the most important requisite
is the activation of inhabitants/producers (and of permanent institutions for consul-
tation on shared projects) as the key actors in reconstructing territorial values.
3.7.2 Bioregional Self-Government Institutions
Urban bioregions require active citizen participation

(a) To reproduce life production factors (air, water, energy, health, ecosystem
services…)
(b) To construct local socio-economic systems based on the enhancement of heri-
tage resources
The merging together of inhabitants/producers takes place within decision-
making institutions that decide what, where and how much can be produced without
compromising the pursuit of public happiness and collective well-being. From this
perspective, the government of bioregional territory no longer administers services
in relation to exogenous and “global” economic choices, but, instead, it manages
locally based economic systems and promotes unique “development styles” that
help protect and enhance local identity; it establishes relationships—hopefully
non-hierarchical and complementary (Thayer 2013)—with other bioregions and

subsidiarity relations with higher government levels. The municipality, or rather the
network of municipalities of an urban bioregion, becomes a promoter of local soci-
ety, basing its development project on “pacts” agreed to by a plurality of actors who
identified common interests when they deliberated their development objectives.
This process strengthens the capacity of urban polycentric networks to tackle pow-
erful (exogenous or endogenous) interest groups that, by simplifying the complexity
of the decision-making system, tend to grab and exploit resources for their own
profit, thereby damaging and consuming the commons.
4 Towards a Planet of Urban Bioregions
The territorialist paradigm of the urban bioregion, thus far outlined, clearly has both
a cognitive and an evaluative value: it enables both unchanged and transformed
areas of the region to be studied in an integrated and cohesive way, on the basis of
their overall impact on long-term—material and immaterial—heritage assets that
characterise identities and development styles that are unique to the particular
region under consideration; it also has value as a design instrument: the consistent,
coordinated use of the “construction elements” described above makes it possible to
revitalise areas, transforming them into “highly complex living systems”, whose
self-government seeks to develop shared and locally self-sustainable projects for the
future, and to achieve social well-being by caring for and enhancing commons heri-
tage. On these two levels, there are future challenges which the adoption of the
urban bioregion paradigm allows us to foresee:
• At the conceptual level, the ambit of the Territorial sciences needs to be expanded
so they encompass the cross-disciplinarity (or more appropriately, the transdis-
ciplinarity) required for a bioregional approach, where the expertise of individ-
ual disciplines is reinterpreted to reflect the view that the “territorial
principle”—guided by a place-focused, participative, “reflexive approach”
(Schön 1983)—prevails over the “functional” principle (Olivetti 1945)—even in
the organisation of knowledge;
• At the design level, switching from developing individual bioregions to plan-
ning, predisposing and organising systems of “federal” relations that bioregions
can or should establish with each other, so as to access the multi-scalar (better
still, the transcalar) dimension of the “higher-order locale” (Giusti 1990), which
appears to be the only plausible alternative to the eco-socio-catastrophic—and
apparently unavoidable—destiny of planetary urbanisation/deterritorialisation.
In the overlap and probable integration of these two challenges, the vision of a
planet swarming with urban bioregions advances; a planet made up of self-
sustaining, self-determining territories which communicate with one another,
which, instead of bowing to the war-like logic of violent, short-sighted disposses-
sion (Kohr 2001), can once again become the unique habitat of human life on Earth:
58 A. Magnaghi
the aware, conscious environment of the human species, their home. From aware-
ness of place to awareness of species.
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Rearticulating the Economy
from the Local Level: Towards
an Economy Rooted in Caring for Life
Marta Soler Montiel and Manuel Delgado Cabeza
1 Premise
Aristotle, in IV century BC, made a distinction between oikonomia, meaning the

rules of the household, which provide “such things necessary to life, and useful for
the community” and chrematistics, “originating in the use of coin” and “how they
may be accumulated” (Politics, Book I, Chapter VIII and IX, 13–15). Based on this
distinction, in the twentieth century, Karl Polanyi differentiated between a formal
and a substantive economy. The first refers to the neoclassical idea that economy
merely consists of individual choices within competitive markets, under the impera-
tives of maximum corporate profits and consumption. This business economy, a
legacy of Aristotle’s chrematistics, is responsible for the processes of deterritorial-
ization that break the fragile socioecological equilibria at the local level (Magnaghi
2011). Conversely, Polanyi defined substantive economy as any social process aim-
ing at satisfying human needs within its biophysical limits, socially embedded in
territory, because every human being “survives in virtue of an institutionalized
interaction between himself and his natural surroundings” (Polanyi 1977, p. 20).
Polanyi’s substantive economy recalls Aristotelian oikonomia and every territory-
based economy which involves people’s connections in their daily lives to provide
what is necessary for life. Recently, feminist economics has pointed out historical
responsibility of women in the economy that take care of life. This distinction
between oikonomia and chrematistics, between substantive embedded economy and
formal economy, between the economy that takes care of life and the one that
destroys it is still nowadays at the core of current global crisis and its possible
alternatives.
M. Soler Montiel (*) · M. Delgado Cabeza

AREA Research Group, Department of Applied Economics II, University of Seville,
Seville, Spain
e-mail: msoler@us.es; mdelgado@us.es

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_4
64 M. Soler Montiel and M. Delgado Cabeza
This chapter is structured as follows. In the first heading, we analyse the main
features of capitalist logic and dynamics in its current phase, and the evolution of
the tensions associated with its reproduction. This dynamic is causing the existing
socio-economic system to plunge into a deep crisis that calls for livelihood alterna-
tives to the dominant forms. We are thus invited to rethink economy from a local
standpoint by adopting a bioregional approach, where culture, nature and history
are connected in the “territory” (Magnaghi 2011). The second heading contains a
reflection on how territory-embedded substantive economies entail an economic
alternative both at a material and at cultural and political levels. In it, social relations
and relations with nature are reconstructed in the pursuit of sustainability of life
through a bioregional approach. To that extent, changes are needed in at least four
areas: the sustainable access and management of resources, the reorganization of
production and labour, the questioning of consumption and its relation with produc-
tion, and finally the logics and values that guide the territory-embedded economies
which meet the criteria of social and environmental justice.
2 Modernity and Capitalism: The End of a Story
The evidence is growing that both modernity as a worldview and capitalism as a

socioeconomic system that embodies it are reaching their limits and entering a
period of slow decomposition or “terminal stage”. Not only does this crisis question
the management of the system but it also has broader consequences: it affects all the
economic, social, political and cultural structures, together with the ethical and
epistemological constructions that underlie the understanding and conception of life
itself. This crisis is resulting in the collapse of the pillars underpinning the industrial
civilization, so that dominant ways of thinking and living are at the core of the prob-
lems we face in this world-system (Wallerstein 2006). A system that follows the
logic of monetary value—money is the measure of all things—and the accumula-
tion of capital, wealth and power.
Therefore, the logic of profit needs and feeds a permanent expansion, driven by
the imperative of converting money into more money. Various strategies are used to
that purpose: the exploitation of wage labour, transformed into a commodity; the
strengthening and rise of patriarchy as a form of domination and exploitation of
women, who are made responsible for the indispensable work of material, emo-
tional and affective care, but excluded from the commercial sphere; and the exploi-
tation of nature through the appropriation of its resources on an industrial scale. The
division of land use is the fourth capitalist way to foster the growth of capital accu-
mulation and wealth appropriation and concentration. Territories are divided into
peripheral areas and core areas. In the former, energy and materials are extracted
and waste material is disposed of, whereas the latter attracts population, capital and
resources. All these strategies represent the main sources of tension between accu-
mulation of capital and sustainability of life (Pérez Orozco 2014).
Rearticulating the Economy from the Local Level: Towards an Economy Rooted… 65
The availability and use of the once-abundant fossil fuel energy are key in
explaining the development and expansion of capitalism. They meant a radical
change in the metabolism of the industrial society with respect to previous forms of
social organisation, in quantitative and qualitative terms. Converting fossil fuels
into mechanical energy entailed both a new dimension in material extraction and
use and a more complex, dependent and specialized society. Moreover, it facilitated
the concentration of power and higher levels of dominion and social control. As a
result, the logic and functioning of the system spread globally (Fernández Durán y
González Reyes 2014).
Some of the changes, obstacles and tensions that tend to be associated with the
reproduction of capital have reached a peak stage within the system since the 1970s.
Profit expectations, simulation of future benefits, and credit lie at the base of the
prevailing regime of accumulation, due to the difficulties of converting money into
more money in the sphere of production or real economy. They permit a nonfactual
creation of value and currently set the pattern of modes and rhythms of growth and
accumulation within the system (Chesnais 2003, p. 38). Confusion between wealth
and debt is a key feature of this “paper economy” (Daly 1995). The sphere of pro-
duction has thus largely become an excuse for capital revaluation.
In this way, accumulation in real economy is reaching its limits, since automa-
tion and productivity growth, produced by capital, parallel the shrinking of labour
force needed and of unit profits. The global increase in the production of goods
counterbalanced this shrinkage for over 150 years. The extraction and consumption
of materials were boosted by the pressing need of permanent growth, to the extent
that they led to the ecological crisis.
This compensatory mechanism has proven insufficient in fostering accumulation
over the last four decades, even though the supply of goods has constantly increased.
Conversely, financial capital “got off the ground” and let capitalism survive con-
stantly basing on credit, that is to say through a sort of simulation (Jappe 2011: 53)
based on the capitalization of future profits. Capital has fled “upwards” towards
financial markets. Nonetheless, not only does this factor not interfere with a
“healthy” economy: it has also created a fictitious prosperity and has made the pro-
cesses of “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey 2004) reach unprecedented lim-
its over the last decades.
Dispossession can be obtained through a revaluation of assets or through big
corporations issuing securities which serve the functions of money, creating bank
and financial money out of nothing. These mechanisms allow financial capital to
appropriate existing wealth. Moreover, they provide it with a tremendous purchas-
ing power on the world market, letting it globally acquire properties of local capital,
of the State and of the public administrations. As a result, financial capital holds
increasingly high positions of power and privilege, in a context of growing unequal
distribution of global wealth. In addition, these instruments promote the capture of
rents, thanks to different strategies: the privilege over the control of public resources,
the privatization, the priority over the use of utilities (water, electricity and gas), the
management of transport as a private business, the housing regulation and finally
the intertwined alliances known as private-public partnerships that are leading to the
plunder of public resources. This path leads to the “dispossession of everyday life”
(Taifa 2016), in a context where all areas of life are invaded by an increasing
commodification.
Not only is life affected by commodification, when individuals sell working time
for the production and its requirements or when using time for consumption, but
also when an increasing amount of “time dedicated to the market-led construction
of self” is spent creating a mode of existence obeying the rules of commodification
(Baschet 2015, p. 44). Thus, people’s relationships with themselves and the others
are increasingly turning into relations between things in a scenario of deepening
social degradation. The pressures of the global market and the value creation within
financial markets result both in a deterioration of working conditions and in a grow-
ing gap between wage labour, which is seen as a sort of “deity” or the main “social
intermediary”, and its increasing scarcity. Competition for employment is exacer-
bated by wage labour shortage, and likewise the types of employment driven by the
imperatives of value are becoming increasingly superfluous from the point of view
of human needs (Baschet 2015). There has been an upward trend in social inequali-
ties, which have reached unprecedented levels in this context (Informe sobre la
riqueza global 2015; Oxfam 2014).
Political power is an accomplice of this situation, because it adapts to suit the
requirements of the established power. “Laws and government may be considered
in this and indeed in every case as a combination of the rich to oppress the poor, and
preserving to themselves the inequality of the goods”. Adam Smith’s forceful state-
ment (Aguilera 2016) clearly expresses the idea of politics at the service of eco-
nomic power within capitalism. Regrettably, this trend is accelerating due to the
consolidation of economic governance and to the fusion of wealth and power. Large
corporate organizations hold the power to force the government in order to facilitate
their business needs, in a context of a “community of interests” between the politi-
cal and business elites increasingly intertwined.
In the industrial society, the imperatives of growth arose from capital accumula-
tion and greater availability of energy and resulted in a transition from an economy
of “production” to an economy based on the “purchase” or “extraction” of fuel and
mineral sources. The monetary reductionism facilitated this process, concealing the
physical costs of economic processes (Naredo 2015). As a consequence, we may
depict massive extraction as a key element of modern society and capitalist system
(Bednik 2016) insomuch that the industrial system currently moves more tonnage
than any geological force. Some authors point out that the human species has pro-
duced a new geological era, the Anthropocene, in which the separation between
nature and human beings is emphasized and their interaction is of increasing impor-
tance (Naredo 2016).
Since the beginning of capitalism, the quantity of materials used has increased
steadily, accelerating since 1950 (Schaffartzik et al. 2014) and with a further inten-
sification over the last decades (WU Material Flow 2017). The use of materials was
ten times higher at the beginning of the twenty-first century than 100 years ago. The
use of abiotic resources has greatly increased, considering that they have multiplied
more than 25 times (Krausmann et al. 2009). Global extraction has more than
doubled over the last 30 years, and it has grown yearly, from 36 billion metric tons
in 1980 to 85 billion metric tons in 2013 (WU Material Flow 2017). In that period,
the proportion of mineral and fossil fuel extraction is trending upwards compared to
biomass extraction, which has diminished from 1/3 to 1/4 of the total. The gap
between the behaviour of the contemporary industrial civilization and those of other
cultures and previous ages in human history is thus widening. Human beings have
changed from an organization based on the photosynthesis and its by-products to
another sustained by the extraction of resources from the Earth.
In this way, planet Earth is increasingly turning into a great mine. Even agricul-
ture has become an extractive activity, since it demands the injection of large
amounts of fossil energy, water, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. (Naredo 1999). It is a sort
of constant “re-materialization” in terms of volume of material and energy used
(Infante 2014). Besides fostering unsustainable waste production, resource-use
intensification is constantly degrading planet Earth and resulting in the rapid deple-
tion of the resources themselves. Many researchers agree on this point and claim
that our planet is turning into a “Thanatia” (Valero y Valero 2015). If this trend
continues, it is estimated that, by 2050, the levels of consumption of the Earth’s
natural resources will be five times higher than now. In such a scenario, the demand
of some important ones (gold, silver, copper, nickel, tin, zinc, lead, antimony) would
exceed the reserves currently known. As a consequence, humanity might have to
deal with a mineral crisis in a few decades, since substitution of minerals might not
be viable due to global shortage. In this respect, peak oil was reached in 2008, while
peak natural gas is expected in 2023. The depletion of these resources is expected to
occur by the end of the twenty-first century (Valero y Valero 2009; Prats et al. 2016).
Moreover, due to falling EROEI (energy returned on energy invested), very high
investments will be required in order to meet energy demand in the coming years.
As an example, petroleum EROEI has fallen from 100:1 in 1900 to 18:1 at present.
In this situation, the prices of fossil fuels are likely to steadily rise, which will lead
to major socioeconomic consequences (Prats et al. 2016). Conversely, renewable
energy is a negligible percentage (around 2%) of the total energy consumption, and
has low EROEI rates. As Jorge Riechmann (2009) points out, every day we con-
sume the same amount of fossil fuels as the amount of plant material growing in
more than one year on the Earth and in the oceans (p. 144). Replacing fossil energy
thus appears to be impossible.
The ecological footprint analysis also confirms that the current use of resources
is becoming increasingly unsustainable. Since approximately 1975, global con-
sumption of resources exceeds our planet’s biocapacity to regenerate them. In 2010,
150% of Earth’s biocapacity was used, and the quantity is expected to reach the
equivalent of two planets (280%) by 2050 (WWF 2011). In the words of the
Stockholm Memorandum, developed and signed during the Nobel Laureate
Symposium on Global Sustainability (2011): “Science indicates that we are trans-
gressing planetary boundaries”, and “we cannot continue on our current path”.
The unsustainable consumption of resources is responsible for climate change.
In 2016, carbon monoxide emissions into the atmosphere exceeded 400 ppm. This
amount is considered to be the limit beyond which global temperature may rise
more than 2 °C compared to the pre-industrial era. If these levels were reached,
global damages would be serious, irreparable and out of control. Lately, this limit
has been lowered to 1.5 °C (Prats et al. 2016). Accordingly, 2016 proved to be the
hottest year in history, with a 1.1 °C rise compared to the pre-industrial era (OMM
2016). The Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change in 2014 warned that, com-
pared to 1850, “global surface temperature change for the end of the 21st century
(….) is projected to likely exceed 1.5 °C” for all possible scenarios (IPPC 2014).
A radical transformation in industrial society’s metabolism is thus a primary
condition for the reduction of emissions in order to help reduce climate change. This
transformation will only be technically viable with reliable technology and materi-
als, which can provide enough energy for a sustainable society. However, in
Riechmann’s words (2015), this will only be possible if the investment effort is
deeply reoriented, which is incompatible with private priorities of investment under
capitalism and with the perpetuation of the exponential economic growth over the
last decades (p. 33).
Given this situation, how can we start a transition into a sustainable society, fit-
ting the current context of socio-ecological crisis?
3 Towards an Economy Rooted in Caring for Life
Degrowth and alternatives are inevitable, as indicated by the ecological deteriora-

tion, the depletion of resources and the social degradation. There are many exam-
ples of emerging or resisting alternatives stemming from bioregional roots. Some of
them are: peasant and agroecological farming supported by the community and
integrated in short distribution channels ensuring local food sovereignty; small scale
systems of manufacturing production—i.e. textile and timber—connected to local
markets; housing cooperatives; small-scale decentralized production of renewable
energy, which is essential for energy sovereignty; local currencies, barter trade mar-
kets and credit unions for financial sovereignty; time banks, parenting groups,
health and education cooperatives and so forth. Although, in the present article, we
cannot perform a detailed analysis of each proposal, we can characterize four areas
of economic deconstruction and reconstruction. In them, both social relations and
relations with nature are reformulated on a local basis in order to nourish and sup-
port life. The confluence of these four areas implies the interaction between alterna-
tive socio-cultural rationalities and ecological rationalities, which enables the
construction of new bioregional economic processes based on diversity.
3.1 ustainable Access and Management of Resources:

S
Enhancing Commons
Economic alternatives require constant access to material and immaterial resources,

so as to provide all that is necessary for life. Privatization and commodification of
fundamental resources, such as water, soil fertility, energy, housing, health, educa-
tion, result in processes of physical destruction and social exclusion. These are all
increasingly creating socio-environmental conflicts in the whole world, including
Europe1 (Martínez Alier 2002; Temper et al. 2015). Against this backdrop, the
debate and defence of commons revive. In the present discourse, commons are
understood as communitarian forms of resource and territory management beyond
the market and the state. They are able to ensure their conservation and equal access
to all that is necessary to provide sustenance to who takes care of them (Ostrom 2005).
In order to reverse the commodification of the access to resources and to democ-
ratize it, both natural and immaterial commons, such as knowledge and health, must
be defended and enhanced. It is a tangible matter and it is also closely related to
politics, which defines the conditions for access. Private property dominates as a
mechanism of exclusion in capitalism, while what is public and common prevails as
a strategy of inclusion in the world of economic alternatives. Moreover, cultural
aspects also define this matter, taking into account that alternatives to the market are
given shape by the forms of organization, collective practices and underlying val-
ues. All these, in the words of decolonial theorist Arturo Escobar, come from a
cultural plurality, with diverse ways of “feeling and thinking” the world (Escobar
2014). Substantive economies seek to ensure constant forms of resource access and
management through a variety of strategies suited to local circumstances. Materiality
is indeed a necessary yet not sufficient condition for alternatives. Even when private
property prevails, as is the case with most peasant agroecological farming, resource
management is aimed at ensuring cooperation, reciprocity and care in order to pro-
vide sustenance and all that is necessary for life. It is not merely a matter of access,
although it is fundamental, but it is also about the way in which obtained resources
are used.
These alternative strategies for the defence and access to necessary resources can
only be developed through a bioregional approach. As a matter of fact, local con-
texts are the place where these resources are managed democratically, according
with the use rooted in people’s real needs. Moreover, traditional knowledge and
institutions for a sustainable management of resources resist in these contexts, as
both Alberto Magnaghi (2011) and Eleonor Ostrom (2005) remark.
1
See the Environmental Justice Atlas https://ejatlas.org/ and Temper et al. (2015).
3.2 bout the Social Reorganization of the Activity

A
for Caring Life
In market economy, the concept of “production” is mainly connected to wage labour

in companies, which transforms nature making intensive use of capital, machinery
and tools. Its purpose is to create monetary “value”, since the production outcomes
(goods or services) are exchanged for money within the market. This definition of
“production”, frequently reduced to buying and selling at a profit, is an anthropo-
centric and Eurocentric idea. Although historically recent, this concept is currently
predominant (Naredo 2015). Ecological economic warns that this metaphor of “pro-
duction” conceals essentially destructive processes not only in biophysical terms
(Naredo and Valero 1999) but also in social terms, because “our technics has become
compulsive and tyrannical, since it is not treated as a subordinate instrument of life”
(Mumford 1952, p. 137).
At present, no long-term viable economic activity can be conceived of without
taking into account the ecological limits of the biosphere where life develops. This
implies that we have to quit the world of “production” and approach “biomimicry”,
which is a way of meeting human needs through processes stemming from a con-
scious and innovative emulation of nature (Benyus 2002). Biomimicry is a strategy
of ecological reconstruction of economy based on a quest for coherence between
human systems and ecosystems2 (Riechmann 2006, p. 194). It is necessary that we
“produce” fewer things, using less energy and materials. For this reason, economic
alternatives must necessarily be ecological at present. Human sustenance must be
re-thought of in biomimetic and bioregional terms, recovering the ecological ratio-
nality of local knowledge.
The advance in biomimetic processes implies a reduction in the contributions of
capital and natural resources in order to progress towards a life-centred economy, as
has been claimed by solidary economy3 (Coraggio 2007) and feminist economics
(Pérez Orozco 2014). Handcraft Manufacturing and knowledge from experience are
at the centre of economic alternatives, mainly as a result of the necessity derived
from exclusion (Quijano 2007). But they are as well, often and increasingly, a
2
“Nature runs on sunlight, (…) only uses the energy it needs, (…) fits form to function, (…)
recycles everything, (…) rewards cooperation, “banks on diversity, (….) demands local expertise,
(...) curbs excesses from within, (...) taps the power of limits” (Benyus 2002: 7). Jorge Riechmann
(2006) identifies six principles of biomimicry: (1) Stable state (homeostasis) in biophysical terms;
(2) The sun as source of energy for life; (3) Close material cycles; (4) Do not transport materials
for long distances; (5) Avoid xenobiotics as POPs (Persistent Organic Pollutant), GMO (Genetically
Modified organisms), etc.; (6) Respect biodiversity (p. 233, 234).
3
José Luis Coraggio (2007) claims a work-centred economy, with a new definition of work which
refers to all the different human activities, mainly manual, aimed at meeting human needs. This
meaning goes beyond the traditional definitions of “productive” work and, although not explicitly
stated, it approximates to the care-centred proposals of the feminist economy. In accordance with
Coraggio’s text, we used the word “activities” instead of work, reflecting the basic ideas of the
author. A similar reflection can be made on Quijano’s cited text (2007), where the author considers
the limits of alternative ways of doing things based on necessity without any political awareness.
conscious and political process aimed at bringing back “that respect for the essential
attributes of personality, its creativity and autonomy, which Western man lost at the
moment he displaced his own life in order to concentrate on the improvement of the
machine” (Mumford 1952: 11).
It is not about reviving Luddism, but it is a matter of rebalancing social relations
using the tools of artisan activities and their pragmatist view: “the craft of making
physical things provides insight into the techniques of experience that can shape our
dealings with others. Both the difficulties and the possibilities of making things well
apply to making human relationships” (Sennet 2008: 289). As Richard Sennet
argues, craftsmanship is closely linked not only to manual skills, but also to slow-
ness, to commitment to doing things well, to lack of self-conceit towards the out-
come and pride in one’s work, to playfulness, to creativity and a sense of freedom
rooted in the community. Consequently, it implies a new temporality which is able
to respect both nature and the rhythm of life of the community (Riechmann 2004;
Baschet 2015). Moreover, it is thoroughly democratic, since it is not restricted to an
elite only; it is essentially a cooperative organizational structure oriented towards
“learning by doing”. Artisan activity is also helpful in the necessary de-specialization
required by economic alternatives in order to break the hierarchies (Baschet 2015).
As a matter of fact, “the whole of our civilization is founded on specialization,
which implies the enslavement of those who execute to those who co-ordinate; and
on such a basis one can only organize and perfect oppression” (Weil 2013, p. 41).
We therefore need to exit the world of production and enter artisan biomimicry,
at the same time as we exit the world of work in order to enter the world of doing,
especially the world of care. The current notion of work is a historical construction
inherent to capitalism, which has ended up praising the relationships of dependency
and subordination that lie at the basis of paid work, which is necessary in “produc-
tion” and acquisition processes (Naredo 2001). As feminist economy points out, in
this androcentric-biased vision, the concept of work is reduced to employment, with
the result that housework and care work, mostly carried out by women, are ignored
and devalued. These activities are in fact essential for life, but the monetary eco-
nomic process in the market system takes them for free (Picchio 1992), and exacer-
bates the conflict between capital and life (Pérez Orozco 2014).
The exit from the world of production and work in order to enter the care world
for life’s sustainability4 (Carrasco Bengoa 2001, 2014), all forms of life (Puleo
2011; Pérez Orozco 2014), entails breaking the oppressive dualisms of patriarchy
(Puleo 2005). These dualisms hierarchically oppose “male” and “female”, and thus
organize binary opposition between the “public” and the “private”, the “productive”
and the “unproductive or reproductive”, reason and emotions, culture and nature,
etc. Embracing the care world and life’s sustainability implies that the centrality of
4
In the first stage, this proposal of Feminist Economy had an anthropocentric bias, since it defended
a reorientation of economy towards care and sustainability of human life. Nevertheless, together
with ecofeminism, the proposal progresses towards the aim of sustainability of human and non-
human life forms (Pérez Orozco 2014).
markets is displaced and that we enter the feminized world of cooperative activity
and of life-centred available time.
3.3 ritical Consumption and a Stable Connection

C
with the Needs of a Committed Community
We live in a dual society: a part of it is characterized by the extreme shortage of

resources and the other by wastefulness. This duality must be doubly broken. In the
current ecological crisis, the necessary social redistribution of material resources is
only possible in a dematerialization context that goes beyond a biomimetic change
in the organization of the supply system. On the one hand, people who lack the
necessary means try to obtain them, which is directly linked to the access to
resources. On the other hand, the ones who have too much need to practice degrowth
and conscious self-restraint (Riechmann 2004). This is the way in which material
justice can be reached among all social classes, between rural and urban worlds,
between men and women or any possible sexual identity, between ethnic groups and
territories, between global North and South, all this respecting the existing multiple
worlds in the cultural diversity of the “pluriverse”5 (Escobar 2014). It is not merely
an individual matter, but it is mainly a political and civilizing one.
A new, deeply-felt cultural conception of what is necessary is essential for a
change towards material distribution and reduction. In order to achieve this, the first
step is to reject the concept of consumption as a symbol of status and social power
in a hierarchical class system (Veblen 1899; Bourdieu 1979 [2000]), and to start
considering it as a driving force of social and ecological destruction. The imaginary
of the Western urban-industrial way of life of middle and high class, violently pro-
posed by culture, must be displaced from being the universal standard of social
desirability in consumerism (Latouche 2008). At present, this imaginary produces
contempt for traditional ways of life and their ethics of frugality in daily life,
whereas these are at the core of the process of critical and solidarity-based con-
sumption in progress (Ariztia et al. 2016). Furthermore, we must break the Western
confusion between potentially infinite desires and limited needs (Doyal and Gough
1994) and its hierarchized conception. Starting from a concept of human need as
universal and non-hierarchical (Max-Neef 1994), material and political debate must
focus on the redefinition of the ways of satisfying these needs, meeting social and
ecological justice criteria. These are the socio-cultural means to reach material and
psycho-emotional fulfilment. It is thus necessary to exit the world of “having” and
progress towards the world of “being”. Only within this new imaginary the neces-
sary and urgent redistribution of resources will take place non-traumatically, so that
we can reach that de-materialized abundance we need.
5
It is that “world where many worlds fit” and where “we are equal because we are different” as
claimed by the Zapatista movement.
As a first step, the concept of individual subjectivities must be broken, since the
addiction to consumption and extreme commodification of Western market society
life are deeply rooted in individualistic, hypercompetitive and narcissistic ways of
feeling the world (Baschet 2015). These ways are painful but also indifferent to
other people’s pain and to ecological destruction (Shaw and Bonnett 2016).
Moreover, they are rooted in a profound feeling of fear of being excluded or uprooted
(Bauman 2015). But individual change can only be promoted by collective action,
since it requires a sense of belonging, social ties and responsibility, in a community
built on non-sectarian and non-essentialist principles of social justice (Bauman
2009). As communitarian feminism claims, the change towards responsibility and
care for self and other’s wellness must exceed the restricted realm of the family and
the emotional boundaries of the private space of the house: on the contrary, it must
pervade all spheres of life (Paredes 2010). The change, in essence, is a civilizational
one. It rejects the logic of Western development and can only be practically achieved
starting from the diversity of the territories and the multiplicity of people and identi-
ties in them. Direct social relationships are only possible in local territories, where
they generate deeply-felt and embodied connections within the community.
Therefore this civilizational change is in essence and by definition a bioregional
one. Yet it carries a potential risk of ethnic essentialism and of dynamics of exclu-
sion which might result in oppressive local communities. To avert this risk, we
should not abandon the construction of new bioregional communities. Conversely,
the alternative is to promote local political processes in order to break Western cul-
tural bias of developmental ethnocentrism (Escobar 2014) and of androcentrism
(Pérez Orozco 2014), so to build a community life with a “global sense of place”
where diversity is welcome (Massey 1991). The bioregional project will avert the
risk of producing essentialist and sectarian exclusion only through a “global sense
of place”. That would generate a multiplicity of local worlds, open and inclusive to
cultural diversity: a necessary feature, given the migratory connections typical of
our interconnected world.
In order to practically reconstruct economic life, almost all alternatives are rooted
in the local domain. Nevertheless, a bioregional perspective is fundamental as a
means to question consumption and combine it with new forms of artisanal activity.
The main aim is to find access strategies in which exchange becomes separated
from selfish commodified relationships and progresses towards a communitarian
conception, within the frame of material possibilities of agroecosystems and eco-
systems. Local markets become then a meeting point where necessities are satisfied
beyond exchange. In doing that, the duality between production and consumption is
broken by daily connections of care among neighbours in squares, parks, studios,
vegetable gardens, homes, neighbourhood associations, fields, community centres,
etcetera. Provided that as individual sustenance is rooted in cooperative relation-
ships, new processes of individual self-construction will be activated, along with
new subjectivities with a sense of proportion.6 In this process we break and exit
economy, we go beyond reciprocity and we reach the generosity that support con-
nections7 (Graeber 2012). In such a way, collective individualism and essentialism
break down, so that the bodies and territories are combined into a single entity, in
the way pointed out by communitarian feminism8 (Cabnal 2010).
3.4 eyond the Material Question: Epistemology of the South

B
and Relational Ontologies
Taking care of necessities and caring life as a goal is diametrically opposed to the
aim of market economy, which is pursuing profit and accumulation. Economic
goals are linked to socio-cultural processes. Therefore, they are rooted in the world-
views, which is in the ethical, epistemological and ontological matrix of the people
who give life to these economic relations.
Bioregional-coherent economic alternatives are rooted in a moral economy, his-
torically linked to the peasantry (Thompson 1995; Scott 1976) and now acquiring
new practices and values regarding socio-economic justice (Lechat 2009). They
tend to generate new cooperative subjectivities in which “I is we, because each one
weaves the bonds that link themselves to their fellow people” (Baschet 2015,
p. 103), as communitarian feminism also asserts. When sustenance directly depends
6
“The notion of proportion, better than the one of limit, allows for rejecting the ghost of unlimited-
ness, typical of the commodity society (…). Proportion entails posing the problem in terms of
relationships. The sense of proportion is one of fair relationships. In it, self-consciousness is the
prerequisite for respecting others, while the concern for others is the prerequisite for widespread
beneficial cooperative relationships. Proportionality should not be intended as an obligation that
limits each person’s freedom (…). Conversely, it means being aware of the consequences that
unlimitedness and forgetfulness can entail in terms of well-being, peace, available time, friendship,
etcetera”. (Baschet 2015, p. 101, footnote 19).
7
David Graeber (2012) argues that the connections derived from gift and not from reciprocity are
the foundation of all societies. He contends that when, in a quantified exchange, the goods given
and received are equal, even though they are non-material, the connection is broken, being the
connection a relationship of commitment among the people in a community who share a “debt”.
Market economy is based on quantified exchanges, where supply equals demand. These kinds of
exchanges free from the connections and combine individualism, lack of solidarity and affective
indifference towards others. As Polanyi claims in The Great Transformation, this economy destroys
the community and solidarity.
8
Communitarian feminism, a proposal led by Latin-American indigenous women, combines a call
for gender equality in the community (for “us”) with the defence of the community in the territory.
Some of its fundamental teachings are as follows: “When I defend my territory or land it is not just
because I need natural resources for living and for allowing other generations to live a dignified
life. In a view of recovery and defence of my body-land territory, I assume the recovery of my
expropriated body, in order to generate life in it, happiness, vitality, pleasures and the construction
of liberating knowledge for decision taking. I join this power with the defence of my land territory,
because I can’t conceive this woman body without a place on the earth that dignifies my existence
and promotes my life’s fulfilment” (Cabnal 2010).
on natural resources, it generates an ecological rationality that tends to take care of

them (Toledo, 1993). Joan Martínez Alier (2002) defined it as the “ecologism of the
poor”. Conversely, self-restraint and self-construction, both individual and collec-
tive, are the protagonists of the construction of ecologically and socially ethical
alternatives, when alternatives come from will rather than from a pressing material
need (Riechmann 2000). At any rate, bioregional economic alternatives are built
around ecological and biocentric ethics that break Western anthropocentrism.
Moreover, these economic alternatives are rooted in the ethics of care promoted by
feminism, in order to break patriarchal dualities and to place life sustainability at the
centre (Pérez Orozco 2014).
Bioregional economic alternatives defy the three basic axes of oppression of
Western economistic culture, namely, anthropocentrism, ethnocentrism and andro-
centrism, which underlie the current conflict between capital and life.9 Bioregional
economic alternatives entails a new materiality, which can only stem from new con-
ceptions of the world, from new knowledge alternative to Western epistemology
(Sousa Santos 2009), and from new forms of being and feeling the world. We need
relational ontologies where territories are vital times and places interconnected with
the natural world (Escobar 2014, pp. 58–59). From this standpoint, the respect for
cultural diversity as a basis for local economic alternatives implies the challenge of
explicitly linking the bioregional project to the decolonial and ecofeminist critique.
This would direct the practical construction of economic alternatives towards sus-
tainability and care of all forms of life.
4 Conclusions
The ongoing ecological degradation, along with the socio-cultural conflicts, creates
a pressing need for economic alternatives. The bioregionalist approach requires the
construction of a balanced territorial dynamic of human activity, which must har-
moniously fit in the biosphere. Therefore, it is necessary to exit the market economy,
or even to exit the world of economy and enter the world of caring for life. This
difficult and slow transition can only be initiated from the “local” by combining
change processes in the four strategic areas previously analysed: sustainable access
9
The first axis of oppression is against nature. In anthropocentrism, nature is despised and it is seen
as freely accessible, in such a way that the ecological destruction resulting from economic growth
is endorsed for the sake of growth. The second axis is ethnocentrism, which has generated a series
of hierarchized cultural “alterities”. They are the basis for socio-economic and ethnic inequalities
rooted in classism and racism. The urban-industrial way of life of white middle-upper class is
considered the main model of socio-cultural desirability. Thus, commodification of life is pro-
moted, while disdain is directed at popular and working-class ways of life, together with rural and
peasant’s ones and all non-Western indigenous people’s ones. The third axis of cultural oppression
is androcentrism, which implies the contempt for anything feminine identifying it with nature, and
promote a patriarchal culture. Within this culture, the economic system takes advantage of unpaid
housework and domestic care work (Pérez Neira and Montiel 2013).
and management of resources through the enhancement of commons; the reorgani-

zation of sustenance based on artisanal activity for care; leaving the world of con-
sumption and entering the one of life-caring, and the redefinition of our worldviews
and social imaginaries.
In this transition process, Polanyi’s distinction between formal economy and
substantive economy remains fully valid, although an ecofeminist approach should
be incorporated. It is both a material distinction and a conceptual one. On the one
hand, it is related to the social organization of tasks, their results and the exchanges
within the markets. On the other hand, it concerns the rationalities, aims and values
that differentiate the dominant utilitarian economy from the multiple substantive
economies stemming from the “local”. These necessity-oriented economies entail
materialities, activities and relationships that are different from what is currently
dominant. Furthermore, they imply different forms of conceiving and understand-
ing reality, different worldviews, epistemologies and ontologies. In Arturo Escobar’s
words (2014), we need different forms of “feeling and thinking” the life of territo-
ries and their people, combining new different ethics: ecological, feminist and post-
colonial ones.
These different economies continuously emerge and endure, despite the growing
oppression of formal economy. They have been called different names, they defend
different practical proposals and are visibilized through different theories, which are
not always mutually consistent and that are always under debate and in progress.
Some expressions of the different substantive economies are: solidary economy
(Coraggio 2007), degrowth (Latouche 2008), well living (“buen vivir”) inspired by
Latin American indigenous worldviews (Acosta 2013), indigenous communitarian
feminism (Cabnal 2010), some theoretical proposals like the ecological economics
(Martínez-Alier 1987; Naredo 2015) and feminist economics (Carrasco Bengoa
2014; Pérez Orozco 2014) and other practical proposals as Towns in Transition
(Hopkins, 2008) and food sovereignty (Desmarais 2007; McMichael 2014). These
“other economies”, often excluded and removed by dominant views, are creating
fair and sustainable ways of providing what is necessary for sustenance starting
from the territories, in accordance with bioregional principles (Magnaghi 2011;
McGinnis 1999).
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The Co-evolutionary Nature of the Urban
Ecosystem
Claudio Saragosa and Michela Chiti
1 The Concept of Ecosystem and the Human Settlement
The concept of urban ecosystem began to be addressed in the 1960s. There have
been several experiences on the topic (Douglas 1983; Bettini 1990) and, over time,
the definition of it as territorial ecosystem (Saragosa 2001, 2005) has taken shape.
I will briefly describe the concept of territorial ecosystem. Its conceptual model is
well defined by Eugene Odum (1988, p. 13) when he speaks about the ecosystem:
an ecosystem is given by the entry environment, the system considered, the exit envi-
ronment (E = EE + CS + EE). Since I deal with human settlement, the system con-
sidered is to be identified in the settlement and the environments of entry and exit
are to be recognized, respectively, in the areas of the open territory from which the
settlement draws the basic resources for living and in those where it expels its waste.
According to Odum, the territorial ecosystem has to be studied as a system
related to its own entry and exit environments: this also means that we can connect
it to another very productive research path, the territorialized ecological footprint
(Rees and Wackernagel 1996). Therefore, it is possible to think of a system—the
human settlement—that is strongly correlated to the environments of both the origin
of its vital resources and the destination of its waste; thus, a settlement that produces
a footprint on an area of the earth. This footprint may be abstract, but, most of the
time, it has an exquisitely spatial dimension, i.e. territorialized.
By adopting the conceptual tool of territorial ecosystem, it is useful to connect
the problem of self-sustainability of the human settlement to the management of the
The chapter is the result of a common work of the authors. However, paragraphs 1 and 2 should be
attributed to Michela Chiti, whereas paragraphs 3,4 and 5 have been written by Claudio Saragosa.
C. Saragosa (*) · M. Chiti (*)

Architecture Department, Florence University, Florence, Italy
e-mail: claudio.saragosa@unifi.it

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_5
82 C. Saragosa and M. Chiti
environments of origin-destination (therefore of the ecological footprint) of the

observed settlement.
Again, from a conceptual point of view, it is possible to create a process of analy-
sis of the self-sustainable human settlement produced by the territorial ecosystem.
A sustainable settlement can be seen as a living system. For Fritjof Capra, living
systems are identified by the “three conceptual dimensions of scheme, structure and
process” (Capra 1997, p. 180). In synthesis, what Capra proposes is to interpret
autopoiesis, defined by Maturana and Varela (1980, 1987), as the scheme of life (i.e.
as the organization scheme of living systems); the dissipative structure, defined by
Prigogine, as the structure of living systems; and cognition, initially defined by
Bateson and more comprehensively by Maturana and Varela, as the process of life.
The self-sustainable human settlement, which I am conceptually outlining, has
its own internal organization scheme of an autopoietic type, too. Each sustainable
settlement, inserted in its own environment, has its own internal configuration that
continuously reproduces itself in a continuous process (if, of course, mechanisms of
necrosis do not arise).
Autopoietic processes evoke an internal organizational closure, while every liv-
ing system (and metaphorically the settlement I am observing) is an open system
continuously crossed by flows of matter-energy. The characteristic of a living sys-
tem, as we know, is to be both open and closed at the same time: a living system “is
structurally open, but organically closed. Matter flows continuously through the
system and yet it maintains a stable form, doing so autonomously by means of self-
organization” (Capra 1997, p. 115).
The self-sustainable settlement can only be an open system, continuously crossed
by flows of matter-energy and information. To maintain its internal organization and
its configuration, as to preserve its identity and vital characteristics, it must also
ensure the continuous regeneration of the network of autopoietic processes.
In other texts, I realized how to use some concepts developed by ecology also for
our settlement issues.
According to Ilya Prigogine, «dissipative structures are islands of order in a sea
of disorder and they maintain and even increase their order at the expense of greater
disorder of the environment. For example, living organisms take structures with an
order (i.e. food) from the environment, use them as resources for their metabolism
and eliminate structures with lower order (i.e. waste). This means that the order
“floats in the disorder”, to use the words of Prigogine, while total entropy continues
to increase in harmony with the second law”» (Capra 1997, p. 210).
It is evident that the concepts of autopoietic scheme and dissipative structure are
closely interrelated: in synthesis, autopoiesis is a set of relationships among produc-
tion processes; a dissipative structure is a combination of metabolic and develop-
mental processes. However, according to Capra, both the previous two definitions of
vital processes must be correlated with another interpretative principle, that of cog-
nitive processes: “in the emerging theory of living systems, the process of life – the
continuous materialization of an autopoietic scheme into a dissipative structure – is
identified with cognition, the process of knowledge […]. The interactions of a living
organism – vegetal, animal or human – with its environment are cognitive, i.e.
Bioregion and Spatial Configurations. The Co-evolutionary Nature of the Urban… 83
mental interactions” (Capra 1997, p. 192). It must be pointed out again how, for
Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, every living system interacts with its
environment through a structural coupling, “that is, through recurrent interactions,
each of which triggers structural changes in the system” (Capra 1997, p. 243).
Within this concise reconstruction of the conceptual model, in the phase of defin-
ing this analysis of the settlement systems as living systems, it is fundamental to
underline the importance of the cognitive process previously indicated. In this con-
text, the identity configuration of a settlement can be defined as the physiognomy of
the settlement and the dissipative structure as the physiology of the settlement.
Therefore, it becomes crucial to also define the learning process that each settlement
experience produces in its complex interrelation with its reference environment.
We all know that every living organism responds to environmental influences
with structural changes that will lead to changes in the organism’s behaviour in the
future. In other words, a structurally coupled system is a learning system: structural
changes in response to the environment (adaptation, learning and development)
allow us to define its behaviour as intelligent.
According to Maturana and Varela, “the environment can be seen as a continu-
ous “selector” of the structural changes that the organism undergoes in its ontogen-
esis” (Maturana and Varela 1987, p. 97). Hence the consequence that adaptation is
reciprocal: environment and living organisms coevolve. As James Lovelock states:
“the evolution of organisms is so closely coupled with the evolution of their envi-
ronment that together they constitute a single evolutionary process” (Lovelock
1991, 99).
According to Maturana and Varela, as already observed, an autopoietic system
preserves at the same time its own networked organizational scheme and its own
identity, even if it undergoes continuous structural changes. As a result, living sys-
tems specify which perturbations from the environment trigger their own structural
changes. Since, according to Santiago’s theory, such changes consist of cognitive
acts, by specifying which perturbations from the environment trigger changes, the
system “generates a world” (Capra 1997, p. 295).
In other words, Santiago’s theory states that the organism does not react to envi-
ronmental stimuli by means of a linear chain of cause and effect but responds with
structural changes in its non-linear autopoietic network, which is closed from an
organizational point of view. This allows the organism to continue to live in its envi-
ronment, while preserving its own organization. The consequence of this is that
cognition is not a representation of an independent world, but rather the generation
of a world. “What is generated by a particular organism in the process of life is not
the world but a world, a world that always depends on the structure of the organism”
(Capra 1997, p. 298).
To give a simplified, but hopefully effective, example, let us imagine a settlement
system immersed in its own environment. The system has its own internal configu-
ration produced by the continuous work of dissipative structure connected to an
environment from which it draws the neg-entropic resources to be able to perform
its vital functions. In a human settlement, the external environment is originally
given. The settlement system develops in structural coupling with this environment,
producing a complex system of rules for utilizing of the original nature. Therefore,
the system generates a complex process of learning of adaptation methods and use
of the neighbouring environment that evolves with the system itself over time.
If all this makes sense in the conceptual sphere, what happens empirically? If we
shift from the sphere of the generalization of phenomena to the sphere of the obser-
vation of the empirical world, we know that, within settlement systems, we must
consider that each experience is a unique case: a configuration, a special dissipative
structure, a singular structural coupling that produces a special learning process.
As a matter of fact, every settlement experience is produced starting at least from
an original nature that, in every point of the earth sphere, is different from the oth-
ers. If we think of a settlement that proceeds throwing roots in a reference environ-
ment, we must consider that this environment is endowed with a specific and unique
structure and functioning.
2 The Generation of a Bioregional World
The generation of a world, as mentioned earlier, involves both a metabolic structure

that manages to build its own dynamic balances and a structuring of the physical
space able to activate emotionally positive perceptual processes.
It is no longer an ideological or spiritual choice, but a necessity. Taking care of
the city and the territory, which are common goods (Magnaghi 2010), means taking
care of the community in which it develops, looking for a space as an environmental
therapy for the healthiness of living, a space as a device that nourishes the desire for
sociality, a space as the essence of its being for others pursuing a public objective
aimed at the welfare of the inhabitants. In this sense, a new perspective of research
opened, outlining a code of ethics of design control for the building of living spaces,
based on a new physiocracy, towards the city of life, “a Biopoli, what it has always
been until recently, when it got sick.” (Saragosa 2016)
When space is generated, it needs both an ecological and a perceptive verifica-
tion; in the latter case, it must meet the deep feeling of the human psyche. To give
quality to the life it welcomes, the urban and territorial space must be in harmony
with a sense that characterizes the way men feel spiritually fulfilled. At the same
time, the forms of the anthropic space must not only satisfy the sensual feeling: they
also have to resist (and feed themselves) to the flows of matter and energy that natu-
rally characterize the world. In the management of flows, space seeks a dynamic
balance with the forms that can give an empathic satisfaction when they are per-
ceived. Therefore, the correct management of flows must consider the forms. It is
necessary to identify that plot that connects us, as inhabitants, to the world in which
we are immersed in and that it is characterized by those forms that manage the flows
(Figs. 1 and 2).
Then, the city and the territory are always shapes that support flows and always
flows that generate shapes: it is this unity, this fundamental plot that constitutes the
world in which our bodies are surrounded. The city and the territory exist because
we are immersed in and moving within them, we are swimming in their forms and
Fig. 1 Flow management scheme in the territorial ecosystem. (Source: Authors’ and Rossi
elaboration)
Fig. 2 The dynamics of energy-material flows in the morphogenetic process of the shape of an
urban square in the alternation of seasonal winter-summer cycles. (Source: Chiti M., “From growth
to degrowth: theories, measures, flows and rules for the regeneration of the urban bioregion”, PhD
thesis, 2014)
flows, we are moving through an atmospheric cauldron of changing stimuli, involv-

ing or comparing multiple sensations (Mallgrave 2015).
There are different ways to build a project, in the sense of generating the world
that is not yet manifest in front of us. A first, mechanical method consists in
proposing solutions that do not fit in with the ecological complexity of the world or
with the perceptive capacity of men. A project that throws into the world a form that
badly manages either the flows of the environment or the forms will cause a man’s
negative emotional reaction. These are gestural and idiosyncratic approaches that
tend to tear the plot of the vital world. A second, comprehensive way preserves the
knowledge stratified in the attempts to manage flows and forms in an approach
based on attempts and errors with correction of the process in a perspective of co-
evolution between environment and species. In this second approach, it is not so
much the designer’s pure creativity that counts, but rather his capacity for innova-
tion with respect to the information material collected in the evolutionary history of
space configuration solutions. This second approach is based on a variously struc-
tured method developed in recent times by various scholars in different cultural
areas between Europe and the United States. All these approaches are based on the
concept of information accumulated in an abstract point defined with the terms of
meme (Dawkins 1979), type (Caniggia and Maffei 1979), pattern (Alexander 1979;
Alexander et al. 1977), or, as I have more recently tried to define, with the term of
spatial configuration (Saragosa 2014).
3 Spatial Configuration and World Generation
The concept of spatial configuration is to be related to that of configured space. The

configured space is the one that stretches in front of us, the result of long processes
of structuring that have transformed the original nature into the territory of men.
Thus, this configured space has its own identity, its own form that manages the com-
plex ecologies that each part of the Earth necessarily offers, giving life the possibil-
ity to develop. In the decoding of the secrets that the configured space offers us, we
can find that system of morphological principles with which life (and especially the
life of men) can manage the necessary matter-energy flows. From the configured
space we can extrapolate those characters of the form that, unfolded in the environ-
ment, support the organic generation of the space that surrounds us. The spatial
configuration collects the precious information given by the continuous relationship
of knowledge with the fluctuating environment in which life unfolds; knowledge
that, like a gene, accumulates and sediments as a memory, the way in which, over
time, we can find a solution to the problems of generating the space that surrounds us.
The spatial configuration is an accumulator of information and therefore a mem-
ory. It accumulates the solutions that, once tried and tested and in relation to specific
context, are selected in the fluid process that gives rise to a configuration. In the long
period, the spatial configuration learns to both solve the problems of spatial organi-
zation and manage the flows, checking which decision seems to solve the coupling
between the subject and the reference environment in the best way. A process that
we could define as Darwinian, a process with testing and error correction, a process
of selecting configurations that, at that time and in that place, seems to be the most
appropriate, discarding configurations that do not solve any of the emerging
problems. This continuous process of selection of forms through the generation and
re-elaboration of formal material is never stopping and concerns both the correction
of the management of the metabolic flow and the correction of the principle that
underlies the perceptive evaluation of the form. In this case, it is clear how the pro-
cesses of defining the result by activating the chain sensation-perception-emotion
are necessary: the formal representation is always produced carefully, contextual-
izing the formal adjustments that are under continuous evaluation by the operator.
This is a complex operation not only because is it necessary to identify a form that
satisfies the sensation-perception-emotion chain, but also because this form must be
able to manage the flows of matter-energy. This complexity requires a long prepara-
tion phase in the process of test and error, to accumulate those spatial configurations
that can solve perceptual problems in a space to be used in its multiverse aspects in
which men must move within. Any form of life works in the same way. DNA accu-
mulates information that can generate a new person as it unfolds.
This metaphorical approach between spatial configurations and DNA has
appeared possible to many. If we consider the spatial configurations as an entity
capable of accumulating a memory, able to generate new configurations, the meta-
phor seems even more pertinent. Moreover, the archetype, as Jung would like it to
be (Jung 1968), seems to have its own genetic origin, an instinctual way, an inner
instinct, a deep drive to organize the world that derives not much from the informa-
tion accumulated by the individuals, but from those accumulated during the evolu-
tion of the species to which it belongs. A way of organizing the world that Kandel
(2012) would say to be wired, inscribed in the genetic organization of the nervous
system as a result of the accumulation of nerve bundles to other nerve bundles, of
memories to memories, during the long evolution of species. This deep interiority is
what probably gives us the sense of some things as we perceive them, as perceiving
is also due to this hidden nervousness. As Maurice Merleau-Ponty (2012) said, it is
due to tensions that, like lines of force, cross the visual field and the system own
body-world and that animate it with a deaf and magical life, imposing here and
there twists, contractions and swellings.
Although the way we relate to the world derives largely from individual experi-
ences, the experiential memories, some behaviours and the way we build a sense of
the world clearly derives from our wiring, from the way our interface with the envi-
ronment has been built over time to help with survival in the tumultuous cosmos that
surrounds us. Our wiring, in short, depends on the way we evolved over time, but
our wiring is also the way we organize many factors with whom we perceive and
organize the world; the way we instinctively feel the things that surround our body.
And despite the structural differences of individuals, these emersions from the deep
appear as collectively similar ways of floating in the fluid world that surrounds us.
The archetypes that emerge are produced by this complex management of the
genetic memory sedimented in the collective unconscious of Jung, in the collective
feeling-perception. In the configuration of space, the archetype cannot be denied
(and we could not do so, it being a deep part of our way of being), the archetype can
only be discovered and managed to make even more effective the activation of pro-
cesses of meaning, including, perhaps, beauty.
Fig. 3 The road type: some spatial configurations in the management of form and flows. (Source:
Chiti M., “From growth to degrowth: theories, measures, flows and rules for the regeneration of the
urban bioregion”, PhD thesis)
Fig. 4 The transcalarity of relationships in spatial configurations and in managed flows: the type
of neighbourhood unit, the block type, the road type, the building type. (Source: Chiti M., “From
growth to degrowth: theories, measures, flows and rules for the regeneration of the urban biore-
gion”, PhD thesis)
But it is with the spatial configurations that the issue becomes even more inter-
esting. Through the spatial configurations, the memory collected is in finding a
solution in close confrontation with the reference environment, in seeking the
space-matter configuration that solves the problems of form and flow (Figs. 3 and 4).
The solution to an emerging problem, the solution to a problem of coupling an
organism with its environment can never be extemporary. Obviously, in this process
of attempts and errors, stochastic methods play a fundamental role. We throw many
arrows, but only some of them hit the target. Chance plays a key role, but it is not
just chance that drives the process: the dart thrown hits the target and the target is
the selective criterion. Perhaps the trajectory of the darts is random, but only the
darts that hit the target are selected as entities that can last to give substance to the
complex relationship between creatures and the environment. A spatial configura-
tion, born to solve some facts of spatial configuration, collects, in a memory, a
thousand attempts made to solve the problem and especially collects those attempts
that increase the degree of complexity of the configuration to manage form and
flow. At each attempt, the mistakes made, if corrected step by step, accumulate an
information system that will lead to a correct deployment of the spatial
configuration. This (a priori synthesis, heuristic principle, operating gene) is the

knowledge of the correct relations accumulated after the experimental path of con-
tact between the operating creature and the surrounding world.
When we talk about the configuration of the structures of the anthropic space,
we refer to problems of collective order: a road must mean road not for a single
individual but for all the individuals in a community. Therefore, the selection pro-
cess does not only select those configurations that respond to perceptual-emotional
criteria (and to the ways of managing the flows) of the individual but, above all,
select those solutions that respond to the feeling that matures within an entire com-
munity, which, in that configured world, must recognize itself and live. The type
accumulates the correct solutions that are then submitted to the scrutiny of the
entire community living in a place. It forms, in fact, a common language capable of
activating precisely those deep meanings, which can be understood by this very
community.
Spatial configurations are subjected to continuous updating, just as a genetic
pool or a living language evolves continuously. It is in the continuous relationship
between the memory deposited in the type and the comparison with the reference
environment, fluid and changeable, that the information set is updated, responds to
the becoming adapting itself. The spatial configuration unfolds contextually and, in
becoming matter-space, it is measured with the complexity of the environment. It
updates itself and learns from the relationship with the surrounding becoming, more
capable of responding to the changed world even only by its presence. Bowing to
the impending future, the past sedimented in the spatial configurations offers all its
wisdom to the present that flows in its becoming an elusive world. The spatial con-
figuration is not a static entity, it evolves; it continuously modifies the information
that composes it. When it comes into contact with new situations that need to be
solved, it deploys all the accumulated knowledge and, in this unfolding (in this
contact with the chaotic world), it learns new ways of solving problems of form and
flow. The community that uses it evaluates its application and corrects any errors
that emerge in its deployment. The community associates the spatial configuration
that belongs to a scale level with the spatial configurations that act at the other lev-
els (it unites the unfolding of the spatial configuration house, the type of building,
with the unfolding of the spatial configuration at a larger scale, for instance, the type
of road, the urban-type), correcting any elements of disorder that occur in the rela-
tionship of the types to the different scales.
The analysis of configurations is multi-scalar, as are the flows that pass through
them. The scalar factor is not a quantitative territorial measure, but rather a correla-
tion of relationships between the sequence of single urban events (the type of neigh-
bourhood unit, the block type, the road type, the building type) until it recomposes
the global unit in the passage between the different dimensional thresholds. The
complexity of the system lies in the continuous verification of the genetic code with
which it was generated; as a consequence of the reconstruction of the individual
elements, the complexity of the urban bioregion recomposes itself.
It is a long learning process that takes place over time. This learning process is
governed by the information accumulated in history and continuously updated when
organizing matter-space, according to both the perceived forms that activate emo-
tions and the management of the flows that the changing environment presents at
that point of the universe.
4 Generation Method That Has Its Roots in Life

A
and Rules the Bioregion
It is in this process that a rich and shared information is collected, a memory that is
accumulated in the stones (arranged according to relations obtained in the long
process of selecting forms and flows); a memory that is accumulated in the extra-
somatic physical memories (books, manuals, photos, paintings, etc.); a memory that
is accumulated in the collective memories of the civitas that inhabit the urbs
(Romano 2010) and that produce the sense of belonging to the places because men
know how to decode the hidden meanings in the forms and flows generated by the
place itself; a memory that is accumulated in the synaptic-genetic processes of the
brain when we were born in a place where the first relationship with the environ-
ment occurs and produces the first dispositional representations (Damasio 2003)
that will go with us perpetually during the course of our life; a memory that is accu-
mulated in the brain memory, in the form of acquired functions, when our body
distils information in the continuous experience of matter-space that surrounds it in
its specific organization produced over time. The culture of generation of matter-
space (the information accumulated in memories by the spatial configurations in
the making of the world) influences the way of operating that will take place starting
precisely from that accumulation of solutions verified over time and subjected to the
long process of evaluation by attempts and errors. We do not start over again and
again, we only correct that construct that must be organized differently because the
world has varied even from this unfolding of accumulated information; we do not
start over, but we implement our memory when new qualities of matter-space, not
previously read in their possible usefulness, come out. This process of accumulation
is obviously the one that verifies the information (tests and errors, tests and errors,
tests and errors, …), but it is also the one that allows us to select a way (the italics
are necessary since infinite ways, as the possible species, in the evolution of species,
are infinite, and perhaps those now unimaginable will soon be around us) in the
fluctuating complexity of the world.
Our spatial configurations (like language or the genome that stores information
for the development of life) collect and petrify the information that produces the
spatial solutions that organize matter-space in the world (Fig. 5). And this system of
spatial configurations would be negative if it were a very rigid system that does not
evolve together with the community in the world. A language would be only nega-
tive if it was failing in inventing new symbols able to interpret a world that neces-
sarily evolves, if it was not able to describe the changing world of becoming with
new words, if it was not suitable for evolving in the definition of the new qualities
that are discovered in the experiential study of matter-space. If life were not given
Fig. 5 The dense places of the spatial configurations of the city. In the figure, the areas of the
existing city, in which the spatial configurations identified in the urban code recur, are identified
(the brightest colours highlight the accumulation of spatial configurations; the dullest colours
detect the rarefaction of the spatial configurations). (Source: Research project “Activities of
technical-scientific collaboration to support the Revision of the Urban Regulations of the City of
Cecina”, Prof. C. Saragosa, coordinator)
by a continuous updating of the information contained in the genetic memory, it

would be a continuous reappearance of an organism that, if placed in the changing
world, would soon be suppressed. In the selection method, which is hidden in the
selective process of a language and of life, there is something powerful; even though
the selection method tends to store and use the information that has been laboriously
collected in a rigid way, it is a method open to the future and is able to update itself
continuously with the changing environment to which it is ecologically and empath-
ically linked. If the language or the code were abandoned, it would always be neces-
sary to re-start from the beginning, losing that precious information accumulated
over time that allows us to build those bodies capable of deploying without making
evident mistakes.
A set of spatial configurations that organizes matter-space works in the same
way: it is powerful because it acts as a memory that collects information, experi-
enced over time, that helps to solve the problems of living; it is powerful because it
is open to the future by continuously updating itself according to the needs that arise
in the becoming of the fluent world. It is rigid, just like the compendium of genetic
information that generates an individual according to the rules of its species; it is
rigid, just like a language that, being a set of shared symbols, allows more
individuals to understand each other in the actions they want to perform in common.
But it is also flexible; how flexible is a language that, by updating itself, invents
symbols capable of representing new and emerging qualities? It is flexible; how
flexible is an individual who, in unfolding the deep genetic rules, always intersects
them with new ones, combining two distinct tanks?
In relation to the decoded spatial configurations, the multi-scalar analysis of
matter-energy flows allows us to examine the environmental dimensions in detail
and as a whole, that is, in the complexity that sustains the environmental quality of
living. The continuous passage between a scale and the other and the complex and
transcalar articulation of the system of resources sometimes highlight the attenua-
tion of the structural coupling necessary to the life of both the settlement and the
territorial ecosystem. The density of the spatial configurations created dissolves
over time in the development of the city’s growth; the space is impoverished, losing
its recognizability and self-identification; in other words, the quality of living
(Saragosa 2011).
The unfolding of the rules identified is dynamic, like the co-evolutionary rela-
tionship of the inhabitant with his/her environment of reference. The parts of the
city in which the graphic signs are more rarefied are therefore susceptible to a mor-
phogenetic process of regeneration, in which the space becomes richer and dense to
constitute the city as recognized by the inhabitants.
In this process that unfolds slowly and collects solutions verified with the method
of attempts and correction of errors, each increase in information is therefore a veri-
fied, rare, precious information. Every attempt considered correct is collected,
memorized and made available to the following situations. In language, signs or
symbols that do not come from this long and slow process of synthesis have labile
meanings; in the biological genetic sets, information that has not been subjected to
this long screening process is even harmful, with the risk of tearing apart the organic
tissues that are trans-scalarly bound to each other and that result from the slow
deployment of the information sedimented in the genetic memory. Mutated genetic
material produces the cancerous tissues, lacerating the organic unity.
There are archetypes that operate on the information accumulated thanks to
which, man, over time, has evolved, has wired up. There are types (spatial configu-
rations) that are cultural constructs created by the slow evolution of the solutions of
the organization of matter-space that have been screened, for form and flow, in the
long application period of a community to the solution of the problem of living in a
place of the Earth. And this selection takes place through continuous experimenta-
tion, with continuous hybridization of the coded material selected elsewhere, with
evaluations of the continuous fluctuation of the world that welcomes us. Between
the diversity of matter-space and selection guided by chance and between success-
ful attempts and correct errors (stochastic processes), in the relationship with the
places of the Earth and in relation to the processes of selection, a culture of settle-
ment is born that helps man to distil those configurations that give existential mean-
ing to the word living.
It is precisely at the point of the cosmos where the evolutionary process is born,
characterized by properties of matter-space to which we recognize some utility and
on which lies the material to which we already assign some value (from the forms
that excite us, to the flows that feed us), that the life of a settlement is born.
5 orm (Morphology) and Flow (Ecology), Empathy

F
and Entropy in the Morphogenetic Processes of Space
As we have mentioned, spatial configurations are types, memes, which have a shape
and manage a flow. The way in which they develop over time is linked to a long
process of testing and correction of errors similar to what happens when the genetic
heritage of various species in the world of life is formed. While in genetics, the
bonds of informational structures are rigid, in memes, which collect the basic infor-
mation for generating space, the bonds are much weaker. While in the gene the
information is collected in a long theory of tests and errors within the changing
environment with a system of continuous mixing of information supported by sto-
chastic processes, in the memes, the selective process is linked both to the ecological
relationship with the world of flows and to the perceptual evaluation of the species
that produces structural changes in the geometry of physical space. This variation
must be produced considering the relationship between perceptual capacity and pro-
duced forms. Obviously, not all forms produce the same emotional effects in the
presence of complex evaluation systems. There are forms of fear and forms that
make us feel like we belong to a world that welcomes us and produces a sense of
fulfilment. The accumulation in the spatial configuration (this somewhat special
meme) of rare information capable of leading to a more correct and profitable man-
agement of the metabolic flows of the environment and capable of producing the
emotional forms that support a living rich from an emotional point of view is what
gives substance to the very concept of configuration. Therefore, the configuration
contains selected information that guarantees a more correct coupling with the envi-
ronment (in the management of the flow) and with the mind (in the definition of the
emotional forms). Information is accumulated in these memes that help us to man-
age the continuous morphogenetic process in which our existence in the world nec-
essarily invites us to participate.
If one type of evaluation concerns the quality of the flows, or rather the state
variations between matter and flowing energy in the metabolic processes, then to
evaluate it is possible to approach the very complex concept of entropy. Every
organism needs to metabolize flows of matter-energy for living, optimizing the pro-
cesses of entropic degradation. If another evaluation concerns the psychic processes,
considering that the spatial configuration collects the information generated in the
long processes of testing and error in the evaluation of the perceptive correctness of
the forms, then we can use the equally complex concept of empathy.
In conclusion, the way we use to shape the space in front of us is the result of a
long series of assessments of the ecological and perceptual rightness of the meme
that will then allow us to operate. We collect and send information that is increas-
ingly rare because it is more and more elaborate. And just as genetic heritages
always unfold new life from time to time, updating themselves with respect to the
ever-changing environment where they operate, so Memic heritages deal with their
ability to solve the relationships between life and the environment by transmitting
the knowledge accumulated in previous procedures of ecological and perceptual
adjustment. It is a transfer, it is a making available to the future that is about to come
the wisdom of a past in which the relationship of a changing world has been expe-
rienced. It is a tradition that generates a world.
Two words, then, entropy and empathy, can guide us in a dynamic process in
which the genesis of forms occurs, avoiding the trivial errors given by gestural,
idiosyncratic, mechanical approaches. Evaluating flows, using forms through the
change in the quality of matter-energy (entropic evaluations), allow us to find more
effective ways to synchronize ourselves with the environment in which we are
immersed. With the evaluation of forms and of one’s own perceptive rightness
(empathic evaluations), we can identify those configurations that produce spaces
capable of activating that emotion that makes the world so precious, at least for
men. Indeed, perceiving means enriching the sensation we get from that world in
front of us with memories sometimes unconsciously preserved in our mind. The
perception creates the meaning we give to the things when we wrap those things
with the mnemonic veils hidden in our own, and sometimes impenetrable, Ego. And
when this process of dressing of the sensation releases internal reactions, we call
these reactions emotions. When a bond is created between my Ego and the forms
that appear before me, I will call this bond empathy, a concept on which we have
been working for years.
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Social Justice in Spatial Planning: How
Does Bioregionalism Contribute?
Coline Perrin
1 Introduction
Spatial planning aims at coordinating different public policies affecting spatial

organization (such as land use, transport, and environment). By influencing the dis-
tribution of people and activities in space, it has social impacts. Many European
cities still use traditional land-use planning based on comprehensive statutory spa-
tial plans but have also developed in the last 20 years a new type of “strategic plan-
ning” aimed at social, economic, and cultural development in a context of both
competition and co-operation between city regions (Booth et al. 2007). Together,
this evolution of planning practices and the large scale of metropolitan planning
projects stimulate new interest in the question of how planning takes into account
social justice.
Since David Harvey wrote Social Justice and the City (1973), the scientific lit-
erature has regularly addressed questions of justice and its manifestations in the
city, at the intersection of critical urban geography and urban policy or planning.
This chapter intends to clarify what can be considered fair planning, in relation to
the bioregional approach. In contrast to current planning and development practices,
which are often extractive and can exacerbate socio-spatial inequalities (Anguelovski
et al. 2016), many components of the bioregional approach contribute to more fair
and inclusive planning. However, some dimensions of social and spatial justice may
be overlooked and need specific attention in the planning process, even within a
bioregional approach. In this short essay, we explain the complementary dimen-
sions of social justice, the scientific controversies over how to promote socially just
planning, and we ultimately discuss the impact of the bioregional approach on the
fairness and inclusiveness of planning practices.
C. Perrin (*)
UMR INNOVATION, Univ Montpellier, CIRAD, INRAE, Institut Agro, Montpellier, France
e-mail: coline.perrin@inrae.fr

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_6
98 C. Perrin
2 iverse Approaches to Social Justice and Their Use

D
in Geography
The definition of social justice, as well as the means to achieve it, has been widely
debated in political philosophy (Kymlicka 1992; Smith 1994). These debates are
beyond the scope of this paper. It is however useful to be aware of the diversity of
(sometimes competing) theoretical approaches to social justice.
A first distinction is often made between approaches focusing on the issue of
distribution of rights or resources and approaches focusing on the decision-making
processes. Distributive (or structuralist) approaches (Rawls 1971; Walzer 1983)
define principles of (re)distribution of resources among individuals. Several “just”
distributions (in the sense of morally preferable) can be envisaged. While equality
gives individuals the same compensation for the same task, fairness gives to each
individual according to his/her needs. For example, Rawls (1971), the most famous
proponent of the “liberal” approach to justice, bases his “justice as fairness” on two
principles: the first states that every individual has an equal right to basic liberties
(freedom of thought, of speech, of press, of assembly and association, etc.). The
second principle gives the rule of distribution. It states that every individual should
have the same opportunities (an equal chance to access offices or positions) and
therefore that the only inequalities allowed are those favoring the least advantaged.
In contrast to distributive approaches, procedural (or post-structuralist)
approaches focus on the fairness of the procedures and the processes by which deci-
sions are made. They are based on the idea that “a fair procedure transmits its char-
acter to the result” (Rawls 1971, p. 118). So an unequal distribution can be just if it
results from a fair procedure. What is considered a fair procedure depends on the
authors (transparency, democracy, participation, hearing of multiple voices, recog-
nition of differences and of minorities). A major author within these post-structuralist
approaches is the Marxist and feminist theorist Iris M. Young. In Justice and the
Politics of Difference (1990), she stresses the need to recognize the differences
between social groups and to ensure their meaningful participation in decisions that
affect them. Justice is thus achieved through negotiation between social groups.
A second useful distinction can be made between conceptions of justice that
provide a universal framework, an abstract definition of social justice and of the
means to achieve it – like Rawls’ principles – and pluralistic conceptions that are
concerned with concrete situations of inequality or injustices and not only with the
conditions of possibility and the properties of just institutions. In these pluralistic
conceptions, justice becomes relative, depending on the groups and individuals con-
sidered: “In the same place and at the same time there are actors who have different,
often contradictory, even conflicting, conceptions of what isjust” and “unjust”
(Gervais-Lambony and Dufaux 2009). For Walzer (1983), one of the leading propo-
nents of the “communitarian” approach, justice is not objective; there are no prin-
ciples valid for all on all goods in a universalized abstraction. Justice is rather a
relative moral standard, defined within communities according to shared meanings.
According to Walzer, there are different “spheres of justice,” each having a
Social Justice in Spatial Planning: How Does Bioregionalism Contribute? 99
particular way of distributing social goods. A feeling of injustice can emerge when
one sphere dominates another (e.g., when money gives political power). Young
(1990) maintains that the recognition of social groups (not conceived as communi-
ties, but as affinity groups) is essential to redressing structural inequalities, because
we often compare classes of people rather than individuals in our evaluations of
inequality and injustice. She thus proposes to identify concrete situations provoking
a feeling of injustice, distinguishing five forms of injustice or “faces of oppression”:
exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural domination, and violence.
Her theory has had a great impact on contemporaneous geographers working on
spatial justice (Gervais-Lambony and Dufaux 2009), environmental justice
(Blanchon et al. 2009), or planning (Fainstein 2010).
Geographers refer alternatively to various theoretical perspectives on social jus-
tice. The concept of social justice is more a theoretical lens for geographical issues
(especially related to public policies) than a research question in itself, as it is in
political philosophy. Soja forged the concept of spatial justice (2010): it “is not a
substitute or alternative to social, economic, or other forms of justice but rather a
way of looking at justice from a critical spatial perspective. From this viewpoint,
there is always a relevant spatial dimension to justice while at the same time all
geographies have expressions of justice and injustice built into them” (Soja 2009).
Following Soja, but also the cornerstone works of Henri Lefebvre (1974), Michel
Foucault, and David Harvey (1973), geographers developed a spatial perspective on
justice aimed at describing inequalities (the distribution in space of socially valued
resources and the opportunities to use them) and at identifying and understanding
the underlying processes that produce these unjust outcomes.
3 Social Justice: A Challenge for Spatial Planning?
Many scholars denounce planning as unjust. Winkler (2012) points out that the
modernist planning project, dominant since the Second World War, is grounded in
an unquestioned liberal ethic, aimed at economic efficacy rather than social justice.
This liberal ethic is entrenched in the norms of planning and remains unchallenged
by most planners. Marxian geographers have deeply influenced critical perspectives
on planning up until now. In Social Justice and the City, Harvey (1973) documented
urban injustice in spatial processes and planning action. He sought to understand
and address the issue of urban poverty and inequality and showed how the produc-
tion of urban space contributes to the reproduction of capitalism. More recently,
scholars of environmental justice have also shown that the “sustainability” principle
is not a guarantee of social justice (Agyeman and Evans 2004). In this line of
research, Anguelovski et al. (2016) reveal how planning can exacerbate socio-
spatial inequalities. They denounce the negative impacts in terms of social equity of
urban land-use planning for climate adaptation, bringing to light “unjust” public
interventions, which “negatively affect or displace poor communities” (such as
mega-projects for flood mitigation) and/or “protect and prioritize elite groups at the
100 C. Perrin
expense of the urban poor” under the legitimating banner of climate change
mitigation.
The question is how to improve current planning practices, using contributions
from political philosophy on social justice and the findings of concrete case studies
highlighting current injustices. For Campbell and Marshall (2006), there is a kind of
misunderstanding: the philosophical “conceptualizations were never intended to be
applied to the task of situated judgment associated with the highly contested deci-
sions at the heart of the planning activity. Consequently, the issue for the planning
community is not so much ‘can the concepts of justice embodied in Rawls’ “justice
as fairness” or Habermas’ “discourse ethics” be found in practice but could they
ever’.” Fincher and Iveson (2012) also stress this frequent problematic relationship
in geographic analyses between philosophical principles and the application of such
ideas to actual circumstances and contexts, outcomes “on the ground.”
A first recommendation is thus to adapt the social justice perspective to each
local context. There cannot be one fit-for-all definition of principles of justice for
more fair and inclusive planning. Justice is context-sensitive. For example, many
researchers have denounced the social issues surrounding urban planning in post-
apartheid South Africa. Visser (2001) argues that “if geographical social justice dis-
course is to be useful or relevant to urban planning practice in South Africa, new
theoretical frameworks, sensitive to the geographically and historically located
interpretations of this concept need to be developed.” In particular, his case study
illustrates that “social justice encompasses multiple, diverse and even theoretically
incompatible distributive ideals” (p. 31). He thus advocates better taking into
account what ordinary urban citizens consider as socially just, even if their liberal
understanding of social justice does not fit within the current structuralist/poststruc-
turalist scientific debates. In accordance with this, Barnett (2011) suggests that jus-
tice norms be considered in conjunction with social practices, “emerging from
situated conflicts,” from “widely shared intuitions of injustice.” The best progress
toward justice is made through actions, in actual social movements in situations.
This is also emphasized by theorists of the right to the city and by the environmental
and food justice movements. Scholar-activists involved in such movements thus
propose to focus on solutions-oriented policy and planning initiatives that specifi-
cally address issues of equity and justice (Agyeman 2013; Reynolds and Cohen
2016). In this line of research, normative concepts are less important, or they are
generated in response to real-world instances of injustice.
Other scholars prefer to specify justice norms in advance of empirical analysis in
order to connect social justice theory and planning practice. In The Just City,
Fainstein (2010) develops an urban theory of justice and “uses it to evaluate existing
and potential institutions and programs” (p. 5). She not only specifies the three
norms of justice that she will use in her assessment – equity, democracy, and diver-
sity – but even lists criteria of justice by which to formulate and judge planning
initiatives at the urban level. For instance, in order to achieve more material equal-
ity, “no household or business should be involuntarily relocated for the purpose of
obtaining economic development or community balance” or “transit fares should be
kept low” (Fainstein 2009). To this end, she discusses the antagonist models of
communicative planning (influenced by Habermas’ deliberative democracy) vs. the

just city (Marcuse et al. 2009; focusing on the equity of outcomes). She highlights
the potential contradictions between participation and just outcomes but retains the
two principles of democracy and equity as major components of her just city. Then,
drawing on the work of Young (1990) and Fraser (1997), she adds diversity as a
third component, acknowledging the potential tension between diversity (or recog-
nition, in Fraser’s words) and equality or democracy. Thus, her three normative
categories combine the core principles of recent theories on social justice, but they
are not universal rules for social justice, as they may clash in particular situations or
require trade-offs. They are more an analytical device, three useful categories with
which to evaluate actual planning initiatives.
Fainstein’s effort to connect social justice theory and planning practice has been
widely praised. Fincher and Iveson (2008) similarly tried to look beyond inclusion-
ary planning processes to consider outcomes too. However, they criticize the way
Fainstein applies top-down normative categories to analyze and interpret actual
situations (Fincher and Iveson 2012). In response to that criticism, they promote a
continuous “dialog between foundational norms and analysis of situations and
actions in the world”: “justice norms and unjust practices have to be held in tension,
in conversation, in an analysis.” This may “involve the specification of justice norms
in advance of analysis, but in a manner that is more tentative and suggestive rather
than dogmatic and final” (p. 237). In fact, their three key principles – redistribution,
recognition, and encounter – are similar to Fainstein’s three categories and influ-
enced by them. However, they not only reveal unjust planning practices but also try
to promote more just practices by highlighting through examples the efforts to shape
cities according to such principles. They identify general “decision rules”
and emphasize the significance of context and local specificity in determining what
generates greater equity and justice in urban life.
4 How Bioregionalism Contributes to Socially Just Planning
Bioregionalism is connected to anarchist, utopian socialist, and regional planning

traditions (Sale 1985). It gestated in the 1960s’ counterculture of interrelated social
change movements within activist communities fighting against capitalism. It was
first conceived as the interaction of concern for place, politics, and ecology in order
to balance machine-driven economic progress with cultural and ecological sustain-
ability. It aims at reconnecting “socially-just human cultures in sustainable manner
to the region-scale ecosystems in which they are irrevocably embedded” (Aberley
1999, p. 13). Hence, even if most bioregionalist approaches do not explicitly aim at
improving social justice, several core principles of this social movement and action-
oriented field of research embrace the values of social justice and can contribute to
fairer and more inclusive planning.
First, bioregionalism implies concern for distributive justice, as it highlights the
connection (and promotes a reconnection) between human cultures and region-scale
102 C. Perrin
ecosystems. For Aberley (1993), “the promise is that these bioregions will be inhab-
ited in a manner that respects ecological carrying capacity, engenders social justice,
uses appropriate technology creatively, and allows for a rich interconnection
between regionalized cultures.” Hence a bioregional approach should engender
social justice. Place is considered as a community of beings, human and nonhuman.
In addition to enhancing justice among human beings, such an approach will even
contribute to a better balance (and justice?) between human and nonhuman beings.
Then, bioregionalism promotes context-based or life-place planning. Place – or
life-place to use bioregionalist words – is produced or co-constituted by the long-
term interaction between nature and culture (Alexander 1990). A bioregional plan-
ning initiative will thus always take into account specific local features and the
context in all its dimensions (physical, cultural, etc.). It won’t apply top-down uni-
versal rules: it will, on the contrary, integrate different physical sciences (biogeog-
raphy, climatology, geomorphology) with other forms of knowledge (natural history,
indigenous knowledge). It aims at articulating the economic, political, and sociocul-
tural spheres according to the norms of ecological sustainability, social justice, and
human well-being through the concept of place (Evanoff 2011). Such an eco-
systemic multidisciplinary context-based approach will thus avoid extractive plan-
ning practices, mega-projects prioritizing urban and economic development, which
have proved to have a negative impact on social equity. Instead, it will promote
projects that recognize and take into account the diversity of local communities and
the heritage of the place. For Thayer (2003), what will in practice drive toward bio-
regional or life-place planning are the limitations of conventional planning
approaches (often involving a lack of regional plans and a top-down expert or engi-
neer approach to planning) and “a growing demand for comprehensive, ecosystemic
social and physical planning” (p. 146), i.e., the recognition by the civil society and
more and more experts of the validity of this comprehensive approach to planning.
Such life-place planning needs to be adapted to every single context: “The practi-
cal bioregional hypothesis, then, is simply that for every bioregion there is a unique
method or set of practices of planning, design, and management of the land and that
this approach will result in a bioregionally unique set of landscape patterns”
(Thayer 2003, p. 162). How can this be put into practice?
Practically, the reinhabitation of place promoted by bioregionalism implies
increased procedural justice in planning because it relies on wide and open partici-
pation in decision-making processes. It promotes more face-to-face voluntary,
affinity-based, horizontal interactions between local economic, political, and social
actors. This empowerment of inhabitants requires a shifting of power to the more
local level. For Thayer (2003), “in the case of life-place planning, there is no bound-
ary between planning, education, and participation: all are subsumed into a general,
reinhabitory culture. Bioregional education, in fact, is likely to be a many-sided
dialogue, with local residents teaching experts as well as vice versa, and the whole
gamut of stakeholders exchanging views on many interrelated subjects” (p. 175). In
this paradigm shift, he mentions the role of unofficial civic planning organizations
“to counterbalance the incremental and unsustainable ‘business-as-usual’ planning
and development demonstrated by most city governments” (p. 170).
Aberley (1993) underlines the useful and empowering role that locally made
maps can play in building a common vision for the future, in depicting strategies of
resistance, and in opening up the possibility of actually building an alternative. The
Italian territorialist scholars have shown in the region of central Tuscany how to
involve the inhabitants at various stages of the planning processes, in order to com-
bine expert knowledge with social production of plan, territory, and landscape
(Magnaghi 2014). Innovative methods such as participatory mapping (community
maps) actually contributed to a co-building of the territorial project. This require-
ment for participation and social production of planning is consistent with Fainstein’s
principles of democracy and diversity, as well as with Fincher and Iveson’s princi-
ple of encounter: bioregionalism implies not only communicative and inclusive
planning but also a community-building process (including community power/
capabilities) and more egalitarian forms of power. Thayer (2003) concludes that
“ultimately, a bioregenerative pattern language is a manifestation of a smaller-
scaled, finer-grained, more participatory, democratic approach to land planning and
management.”
Moreover, the bioregionalist approach includes principles of spatial justice in its
promotion of a decentralized structure of governance that promotes autonomy, sub-
sidiarity, and diversity (Sale 1985). The conception of the bioregion as a territory,
possibly a federation of autonomous communities, contrasts with the overarching
schematic opposition between a center (main city) and periurban/rural peripheries
under its influence and domination. Interactions between the communities are con-
ceived as horizontal, without hierarchical relations of power. For instance, Magnaghi
and Fanfani (2010) promote a renewed social contract (pact) between cities and
countryside in the long term as a way to achieve the objective of reconnection and
balance between human and physical systems. They recognize the multifunctional
role of open space within regional planning: forest and farmland are not only pro-
ductive for one sectorial industry; natural spaces are not only to be “protected” via
restrictive regulations. Such renewed urban-rural relations can contribute to more
territorial equity.
Hence, the bioregionalist approach shows interconnections between ecological
restoration and social justice. The conception of place as a unique community of
human and nonhuman beings, the promotion of more equal urban-rural relations
and of inclusive decentralized governance, like the social production of planning/
mapping, all promote more fair and inclusive planning.
5 Contemporary Challenges for Bioregional Planning
Despite these essential contributions, the bioregional project for reinhabitation has
been criticized as utopian and ecologically deterministic. Moreover, some initia-
tives inspired by bioregionalism do not actually include the “redistribution of
decision-making power to semi-autonomous territories who can adopt ecological
sustainable and socially-just policies” desired by Aberley (1999, p. 35). Such
104 C. Perrin
criticisms should be put into context: bioregionalism is “a story of many voices”

(ibid.), a body of thought and related decentralized practice that has evolved both as
a body of teaching and as a social movement change. “There are, as yet, no profes-
sional schools of ‘bioregional planning.’ There is no professional society and no
coherent body of theory (…), only scattered examples of such planning might be
construed as success stories” (Thayer 2003, p. 144).
Concerning its consideration of social justice, a first criticism levied at biore-
gionalism is that it does not make it a priority to combat existing structural patterns
of inequalities: “In its desire to forge a community that can reinhabit a bioregion,
bioregionalism has a dangerous tendency to ignore the differential structural posi-
tions of present groups” (Menser 2013). According to Young (1990), it is essential
to understand how groups have been structurally disadvantaged and then to develop
a specific policy that integrates these groups, in order to compensate for such
inequalities. That is why activist-scholars maintain that projects led by these groups
and “projects focused explicitly on dismantling oppressive systems have the great-
est potential to achieve substantive social change (…) and disrupt the dynamics of
power and privilege that perpetuate inequity” (Reynolds and Cohen 2016). This
issue is relevant at the scale of individuals or social groups within a community. For
instance, how does bioregionalism address the integration of waves of culturally
diverse and socially deprived migrants within the reinhabitation project? What hap-
pens if the projects of some native individuals or groups undermine the pursuit of
the ecological good or of local community-building?
A first reply to this criticism is through the connections needed between diverse
movements opposed to a resource-intensive global economy. In his bioregionalist
alternative of place-based, socially just, and ecologically sustainable human cul-
tures, Aberley mentions the challenge of integrating this with other social change
movements (such as the environmental justice movements): “the bioregion could
become the political arena within which resistance against ecological and social
exploitation could be produced” (Aberley 1999, p. 34). Thayer (2003) too notes
how the environmental justice movements have shown “the futility implicit in any
separation between environmental and social planning” (p. 164). According to him,
advocates for responsible land patterns and planning practices “have come to realize
that their interconnections are more important than their distinction.”
Pezzoli et al. (2014) go further by defining bioregional justice as a concept per-
tinent to reinventing place-based planning:
The concept of bioregional justice shares the concerns of environmental justice, but does so
in a way that also highlights ecosystems as common good assets, and human–nature rela-
tions as manifest in human settlement patterns at a regional scale. Bioregional justice inte-
grates multiple layers of justice (e.g., social, economic, environmental, global) by advancing
a unifying place-based approach to improving the land, ecosystems and urban–rural rela-
tionships in a particular bioregion. Bioregional justice ensures that the benefits, opportuni-
ties and risks arising from creating, operating and living in a territorially bounded network
of human settlements (i.e. a bioregion where urban–rural–wild- land spaces co-evolve
socially, culturally and ecologically) are shared equitably through healthy relationships and
secure place-based attachments. Bioregional justice seeks equity and fairness in how a
bioregion’s assets—including nature’s sources, sinks and ecosystems needed for life and
living—are accessed, utilized and sustainably conserved for current and future
generations.
For such authors, social justice is hence at the center of the bioregionalist
approach.
Second, this issue of structural patterns of inequalities may also be relevant
between the various communities belonging to a bioregion or between bioregions,
with a negative impact on territorial equity or spatial justice. As Menser (2013)
points out, “because of spatial segregation within the region in terms of income and
assets and burdens and benefits, bioregionalism could decentralize power in a way
that reinforces existing inequalities.” To illustrate this, the author takes the example
of the New York City metropolitan region: if it was a federation of autonomous
communities, the Hudson River north and the Bronx could be two good candidate
communities, small enough to promote a “Gemeinschaft culture” based on personal
relations (Evanoff 2011), sharing a sense of place, a territorial identity. However,
such decentralization of power “would further promote inequality and injustice by
releasing better-off communities from any obligation to assist worse-off ones”
(Menser 2013). Thus, “the bioregional program to dismantle urban megaregions
and forge a federation of autonomous communities could exacerbate socioeconomic
and racial inequalities” (ibid.). Spatial justice would require that the communities
that have benefitted from all the polluting facilities located in the Bronx (power and
sewage sludge treatment plants, agribusiness infrastructure, waste transfer stations
and incinerators) today jointly deal with the associated environmental burdens. For
Menser (2013), this cannot be achieved within a federation of autonomous com-
munities: it would take a confederation in which the Hudson River north and the
Bronx “would be non-autonomous sections within, and subordinate to, the larger
polity of the New York City metropolitan region” (p. 457). Because of such interde-
pendencies between neighborhoods, Young also argues that the right level for the
polity should be the metropolitan region (1990). Hence, Church (2014) notes sev-
eral critiques of the bioregionalist assumption that decentralized, self-ruled com-
munities would be altruistic (collaborative and not competitive, ignoring power
relations).
In fact, such risks of socio-spatial segregation depend on the articulation of
power between scales of governance and especially on how the principle of subsid-
iarity is applied. This raises the question of the scale/political organization of the
bioregional project. Scale still plays a central role in debates on sustainability
(Sonnino 2010). For some authors, the local level is the site of resistance to the
destructive neoliberal rationales of globalization: equitable forms of economic
development, environmental integrity, and social justice cannot be achieved without
community control and shared access to resources, ideas of decentralization, self-
sufficiency, and subsidiarity (Feagan 2007). However, other scholars show the
inherent contradictions in such a relocalization project, considering, for instance,
local food initiatives (Born and Purcell 2006; Guthman 2008).
The reinhabitation objective of bioregionalism entails this kind of local pitfall,
since it considers that “the road to environmental sustainability lies in the creation
106 C. Perrin
of eco-local economies, which are place-specific and bounded in space by limits of

community, geography and the stewardship of nature” (Curtis 2003, p. 83). However,
Sale avoided this local pitfall by dividing the earth into “nested scales of natural
regions” (1985), and Thayer was in favor of a trans-scalar planning approach, even
though he conceived a bioregion as “a reasonably scaled, naturally bounded, eco-
logically defined territory, or life-place” (2003, p. 6). For Magnaghi (2014), the
scale of the bioregion varies according to the local context. A bioregion may be a
watershed, a city region, and a coastal region with its hinterland. It depends on the
scale needed to articulate environmental, economic, political, and sociocultural
spheres and achieve the objectives of reconnection and reinhabitation. Pezzoli and
Leiter (2016) stress that although problems often occur at a localized scale, they
often cut across scales and the urban-rural divide and “create cumulative impacts
that can have deleterious effects on bioregional and even global environmental sys-
tems” (2016). Hence they advocate, like Thayer, an Integrated Planning Framework
(IPF) combining horizontal integration (across topical areas) and vertical integra-
tion (across scales) of plans and policies, as defined by Godschalk and Rouse
(2012). In his bioregional agenda, Pezzoli also underlines the need for “global trans-
bioregional alliances and knowledge networks” as well as for a “global commons
stewardship” (2013).
Finally, these potential risks of social and/or spatial segregation raise the ques-
tion of the way bioregionalists consider cities. The bioregional project is not meant
for megacities: it is not anti-urban, but it aims at finding new forms of urbanity (like
polycentric urban centers or networks of cities), as “an alternative to the catastrophic
future of megacities and urban regions” (Magnaghi 2014, p. 76). Early bioregional
thinkers even regarded the city primarily as a site of ecological and social degrada-
tion; some were back-to-the-lander enthusiasts (Carr 2004). Sale advocated the inte-
gration of urban, rural, and wild environments (1985). Although, until recently, little
attention has been paid to the implementation of bioregional principles in urban
areas, cities are now at the center of some bioregional projects. For instance, Fanfani
(2018) calls for a “re-embedding” of cities in their surrounding regions and a return
to, “in planning practices, the ‘urban bioregion’ concept, as key feature for balanced
and co-evolutionary polycentric urban regions.” Advocating an “urban bioregional-
ism model,” Church (2014) explains how to implement incrementally bioregionalist
principles into existing urban areas, combining municipal policies and individual
actions to improve the physical environment, with concurrent promotion of environ-
mental education and neighborhood-oriented stewardship opportunities, to foster a
reconnection between urban dwellers and natural processes.
Nevertheless, the bioregionalist emphasis on carrying capacity, designing with
nature, may take precedence over the social/political aspects of the city. A future
challenge could be for the bioregionalist movement to also acknowledge the poten-
tial positive moral and political values of cities for social justice. For Young (1990),
the city provides opportunities for freedom and self-development not found in other
living places (rural, village, suburban). In contrast to the communitarianism under-

lined by some bioregional thinkers, she values the dynamics of multiplicity and
even anonymity of the modern city, the social relations that she defines as “being
together of strangers”, which enable religious, sexual, and cultural differences to
flourish and coexist. Preserving this capacity of the modern city to recognize differ-
ences would be an important component of a just planning approach.
6 Conclusion
The spirit and the core components of bioregionalism contribute to more fair and
inclusive planning. Conceiving of place as a unique community of human and non-
human beings should help to avoid extractive planning practices and promote proj-
ects that recognize and take into account the diversity of local communities. The
promotion of more equal urban-rural relations within a bioregion should create
more egalitarian relations between communities and territories. The social produc-
tion of planning should imply not only communicative and inclusive planning but
also a community-building process. Bioregionalism will thus have positive impacts
on social justice, as assessed in terms of democracy, diversity, and more egalitarian
forms of power.
However, the bioregional project of reinhabitation was not built on social justice
principles. It did not make it a priority to combat existing structural patterns of
inequalities and exclusion, neither between individuals nor between communities or
territories. Its communitarianism may represent a threat to improved social justice,
assessed in terms of the recognition of difference, more material equality and terri-
torial equity. Nevertheless, in the last decades, bioregionalism has expanded to
encompass globally minded trans-scalar approaches, avoiding the local trap and
connecting with environmental justice movements. Going beyond the initial project
of reinhabitation of a life-place, Pezzoli et al. (2014) clearly show how a bioregion-
alist planning approach can address social and economic inequality, by merging
place-based health planning and ecological restoration along the USA-Mexico bor-
der. This example illustrates how “the concept of bioregionalism is evolving through
a process of place- and context-driven adaptation” (Aberley 1999, p. 25). Ways to
propose more just and participatory ecological restoration approaches, to build inte-
grative planning, acknowledging the potential positive moral and political values of
cities for social justice, are some of the challenges currently debated in the biore-
gional community.
Acknowledgments The author received financial support for the research behind this chapter
from the French National Research Agency under the program JASMINN Anr-14-CE18-0001.
108 C. Perrin
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Part II
Fields for (Re)framing Planning in
Bioregional Sense
Bioregional Planning and Biophilic
Urbanism
Peter Newman and Agata Cabanek
1 Introduction
Bioregionalism has been part of cities from the beginning. Cities grew out of the
opportunities they created but could only do this if their bioregional services – food,
fuel, materials, water, waste absorption and ecological services – were adequate and
well managed (Mumford 1961). When cities forgot this link or deliberately denied
it, they collapsed (Diamond 2009). Prophetic voices like George Perkins Marsh said
this in the nineteenth century (Marsh 1864), but the same can be seen in ancient
times. The biblical prophet Isaiah railed about Babylon (a real city but also repre-
senting any city that developed such arrogance about its environmental context);
Isaiah predicted the collapse of Babylon due to its overcutting of its surrounding
forests (14:8) 2700 years ago.
In more recent times, bioregionalism has been rediscovered in the environmental
movement, the territorialist movement (in Italy), the natural resource management
or landcare movement (in Australia) and a multiple of expressions through urban
and regional sustainability (Magnaghi 2005; Cork et al. 2007; McHarg 1969;
Fanfani, 2009, 2013; Thayer 1997, 2009; Beatley 1999, 2012).
The link between bioregionalism and cities is not always made. Some biore-
gional perspectives, like those based around McHarg’s environmental mapping,
give a sense that a bioregion would be better off without the city. Such an approach,
often described as romanticism, has a long history of reaction to industrial
P. Newman (*)
Distinguished Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University Sustainability Policy (CUSP)
Institute, School of Design and the Built Environment, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
e-mail: P.Newman@curtin.edu.au
A. Cabanek
Curtin University Sustainability Policy (CUSP) Institute, School of Design and the Built
Environment, Curtin University, Perth, Australia
e-mail: agata.cabanek@postgrad.curtin.edu.au

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_7
114 P. Newman and A. Cabanek
modernism (Pepper 1996). But new movements are now appearing that are re-
establishing the inherent integration of cities and their bioregion which are more
positive about how the city can help recreate a better bioregion (Newman and
Jennings 2008; Hes and Du Plessis 2015). One of these movements is biophilic
urbanism. This chapter will show how bioregionalism and biophilic urbanism are
related. It will attempt to show that cities can indeed begin their bioregional strate-
gies from the biophilic design strategies. It will demonstrate this in some case stud-
ies, especially in Singapore.
2 Bioregionalism
A bioregion is defined by natural borders rather than by political borders, as in the

Yellowstone to Yukon bioregion, which traverses state and national borders.
Bioregional natural systems are critical for cities to function, but they are usually
assumed to be separate from the built environment. These natural systems that sur-
round the city include the water supply, local food and timber supplies; local materi-
als for building; local waste-absorbing processes in air, water and soils; local
biodiversity that provides the fundamental life forces of the regional ecosystem; and
bioregional recreation spaces for the city. Such bioregional perspectives have been
studied to minimise urban impacts for some time and are now part of a bioregional
science (Thayer 1997, 2009; Fanfani 2009, 2013).
As cities consume or erode their natural environments, there has been growing
concern that they must move from minimising their impact to rejuvenating their
bioregional natural systems. If the natural systems are impacted too heavily, they
can collapse, so the idea of regeneration is now being highlighted to not only mini-
mise this but to repair the generations of damage that went before. The new ideas of
resilient or regenerative design are now being applied (Lyle 1985, 1994; Thomson
and Newman 2018). For example, many ideas for managing the increasing effects
of climate change rely on green infrastructure which is multi-use infrastructure that
uses natural systems to provide functions that traditionally were achieved by grey
infrastructure systems, for example green space to absorb flooding, oyster beds to
revive rivers and bioretention basins and swales (Matthews et al. 2016). Many of
these projects go beyond resilience to actually regenerate the centuries of damage to
their surrounding bioregion.
The more recent addition to bioregionalism is how cities can be even more regen-
erative through biophilic urbanism.
Bioregional Planning and Biophilic Urbanism 115
3 Biophilic Urbanism
Biophilic urbanism is based on the knowledge that humans have an innate connec-
tion with nature that should be expressed in their daily lives, especially in cities.
Bringing nature onto and inside buildings has become the new focus and requires a
new science and a new governance. This has not been a strong feature of architec-
tural principles and practice (even though there has been a long tradition of land-
scape architecture) yet potentially offers great rewards if it is implemented in the
structure of the built environment.
Biophilia was a term first brought to life in 1964 by the psychoanalyst Erich
Fromm in his exploration of the Essence of Man. He saw that humans’ awareness of
their “mortality” separates them from nature, causing deep anxiety and con-
flict (Fromm 1964). Humans try to overcome this anxiety by either a regressive path
of narcissism, incestuous symbiosis, violence and necrophilia or a progressive path
of altruism, freedom and biophilia. “Biophilia” was defined as a love of life and liv-
ing processes.
The concept of the biophilic human being was then examined and popularised in
1984 by a sociobiologist, E.O. Wilson, in his book Biophilia. Wilson defined bio-
philia as “the innate tendency to focus on life and lifelike processes”. He utilised the
term “biophilia” to describe his deep feelings of connection to nature during a
period of exploration and immersion in the natural world. Wilson’s special insight
was that this biophilic propensity developed as part of evolutionary survival so it
encompasses certain characteristics that remain with humans even in modern cities
and thus must be built into its everyday architecture (Wilson 1984; Kellert and
Wilson 1993).
Today biophilic urbanism has become a major social movement within city pol-
icy and practice. The movement from ecology to the built environment can be seen
in the collected work edited by Stephen Kellert and others, Biophilic Design: The
Theory, Science, and Practice of Bringing Buildings to Life (Kellert et al. 2008),
largely focused on the building level, to Timothy Beatley’s book, Biophilic Cities:
Integrating Nature into Urban Design and Planning (2011). There is now a Biophilic
Cities Network with membership across the globe; the network enables cities to
share information on how to mainstream biophilic urbanism into the policies and
practices of cities.
The special niche of biophilic urbanism has been its focus on how to apply
greenery into and onto the buildings that make up our cities, predominantly through
green roofs and vertical greenery that have changed buildings from being concrete
and steel designed to separate urban life from nature to living walls and roofs that
are now seen as habitat sites with a new kind of design aesthetic (Kellert et al. 2008;
Kellert 2008). As a result, a wide range of designs and methods for integrating
nature into the built environment have emerged and continue to evolve with the
potential of linking into bioregional regenerative outcomes.
3.1 Green Roofs
Green roofs are being developed across the world based on a range of new materials
and new technologies as well as new science of what species will thrive in different
areas (Dunnett and Kingsbury 2008; Wood et al. 2014). They are also being built for
different reasons. North America is discovering that they are a very effective and
popular option for managing stormwater and reducing the urban heat island effect.
Basel, in Switzerland, has been installing green roofs for the past 16 years with a
focus on increasing biodiversity. Where there may be a sole initial driver for the
green roof installation, the multiple benefits are discovered which then tends to lead
to a ripple effect of further green roofs being installed in the surrounding area
(Soderlund and Newman 2015).
Chicago first conducted a green roof trial on their City Hall, and its success led
to incentives and regulations to encourage further green roofs in the City of Chicago.
The driver for this was the need to cool the city and reduce the urban heat island
effect. By 2010, Chicago had 359 green roofs totalling 51 hectares, and the Chicago
City Hall green roof has become an icon for Chicago’s sustainability movement.
Green roofs can be intensive or extensive like the California Academy of Sciences
in San Francisco or Millennium Park in Chicago which is an extensive (10 hectare)
green roof built over parking lots; this project has resulted in increasing tourism and
further development bringing $3–5 billion economic benefit to the area
(Soderlund 2016).
Green roofs can become part of a city’s building policy with strong incentives
such as extra density if provided or just the encouragement of a city policy. Germany
began with incentives in 1983 followed by Basel, Switzerland, in 2000. Both coun-
tries currently have a high number of green roofs, and it is now an accepted form of
practice. Washington initiated a green roof rebate program in 2005 and, as part of
their Sustainable DC strategy, aims to have 20 million sq. ft. green roofs by 2020.
Many global cities have initiated some form of incentives encouraging green roof
construction in their cities. Austrian cities Vienna, Linz, Salzburg and Graz provide
multiple grants and subsidies to support various green infrastructures being installed,
including green roofs. Globally there is a growing tool kit of options for biophilic
urbanism policy. This requires not just green roofs but green walls as well.
3.2 Green Walls
French botanist Patrick Blanc was the first to demonstrate extensive green walls; he
created large, artistic and prominent green walls with plant species selected from
waterfall rock-face plants. Blanc’s walls are hydroponic panel systems which are
quite thin, thus enabling them to be large and tall. Since these spectacular examples,
green walls of all kinds have sprouted across the world (Blanc 2008).
Green walls are suitable for both indoor and outdoor locations. The resulting
benefits will vary with the site, and, in some climates, indoor placement brings
greater benefits. Toronto has discovered this with indoor biofilter green walls devel-
oped from NASA space technology research. These biofilter green walls signifi-
cantly improve indoor air quality through a filtering system primarily involving the
plant roots and soil microbes. Biofilter walls are also beginning to be recognised
scientifically where a 2-year study of an installation in Sydney suggested impressive
results of significant indoor particulate and carbon dioxide reductions (Burchett and
Torpy 2011).
There is a growing body of evidence about such projects as the Toronto indoor
biofilters, which have been a popular addition in developments, that they have mul-
tiple social, environmental and economic benefits.
3.3 Benefits of Biophilic Urbanism
Socio-psychological and environmental benefits are the most studied elements of

biophilic urbanism (Newman et al. 2017). These are likely to combine and contrib-
ute to significant economic benefits such as better workplace productivity, improved
health and healing, increased retail potential, decreased crime and violence,
increased property values and employee attraction and increased liveability in dense
areas. These are set out in Table 1 along with some estimates of economic benefit
from each.
There are many obvious benefits of biophilic urbanism, but most of the literature
and work by the biophilic urbanists are on how it can benefit cities as though they
weren’t part of a bioregion. So how does biophilic urbanism help with bioregional
agendas and how can bioregionalism help the biophilic urbanism agendas?
4 Linking Bioregionalism and Biophilic Urbanism
In order for biophilic urbanism to assist with a broader bioregional agenda, it will
need to focus on how the natural features that are being introduced onto and into
built structures can improve bioregional outcomes. Like all landscape architecture,
bioregional-oriented biophilic urbanism needs to see how the choice of plants and
their ecological structures can assist in a range of outcomes being sought by biore-
gionalism. It can also start as a bioregional policy which is translated into a local
biophilic urbanism policy and extends the potential outcomes. There are several
ways that biophilic urbanism can help with the bioregionalism agenda; the three
examined here to illustrate the links are ecosystem services, biodiversity and sense
of place.
Table 1 Economic benefits of biophilic urbanism

Area of benefit Estimated economic and environmental benefit
Better workplace $2000 per employee per year from daylighting
productivity $2990 per employee over 4 months when desks angled to view nature
Improved health and $93 million per year in reduced hospital cost of natural features
healing provided in the US hospitals
Increased retail potential Skylighting in a chain store would result in a 40% sale increase, ±7%
25% higher sales in vegetated street frontage
Decreased crime and Public housing with greenery had 52% reduction in felonies
violence Biophilic landscapes introduced across New York City would have
$1.7 billion through crime reduction
Increased property Biophilic buildings attract higher rental prices, 3% per square foot or
values 7% in effective rents, selling at prices 16% higher
Employee attraction Biophilics attract and retain high-quality workers
Increased liveability in Green features increase saleability of densely built apartments blocks
dense areas
Carbon sequestration In Singapore, aboveground vegetation sequesters 7.8% of the total
emitted daily carbon dioxide
Reduced urban heat Due to shading provided by urban trees, in Los Angeles, annual
island effect and reduced residential air-conditioning (A/C) bills can be reduced directly by
energy consumption about US$100 million, additional savings of US$70 million in
indirect cooling, US$360 million in smog-reduction benefits
Water management and Up to 70% of stormwater retention capability depending of the local
quality climate and other conditions
Air quality Urban street canyons full of greenery can reduce particulate matter
by up to 60% and nitrogen dioxide by up to 40%
Biodiversity conservation A study of 115 wildly colonised green roofs in north of France found
that 86% of species were native to the area
Source: Newman et al. (2017)
4.1 Ecosystem Services
The choice and type of biophilic services in a city can greatly assist bioregional
watershed management, waste management and the provision of resources such as
energy, materials, food and water. Cities covered in hard surfaces need to slow down
stormwater flows, and there is much evidence of this now being mainstreamed, for
example permeable and porous pavements infiltrate rain water which can be stored
in underground tanks as in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Cities with substantial vegetation can
clean the air and water; they can absorb grey water through bioswales and rain gar-
dens to help grow biophilic landscaping, especially in areas where water is scarce at
certain times of the year. Cities can provide particular types of food such as vegeta-
bles, herbs and spices because they are so labour-intensive, reducing food miles as
many restaurants are now using to attract customers. Cities can provide water
through their own urban catchments as well as drawing from their bioregional sur-
rounds as in Singapore (outlined below). Cities can provide their own energy from
local renewable sources thus reducing the impact on bioregions or working in
partnership to share resources like biofuels as in Perth’s White Gum Valley project
(Newman et al. 2017).
The key, as to whether cities do this, will be whether cities plan for this or not.
Modernist planning expectations certainly did not include such agendas, but new
technologies for small-scale water, energy, waste and materials can combine with
the expertise from biophilic scientists to enable such agendas to be mainstreamed
(Newman 2005; Beatley 2011).
4.2 Biodiversity
With declining global biodiversity, increasing the availability of habitat in cities

through increased urban vegetation is an obvious focus for progressive cities. The
United Nations 2012 conference on biodiversity combined most of the world’s
nations in a pledge to increase commitment and spending on halting the rate of spe-
cies loss; but it will be cities that mostly are able to do this. Green roofs and green
walls have multiple benefits, but if carefully integrated into urban landscaping and
bioregional ecosystems, they can also help with biodiversity.
Cities in Switzerland, particularly Basel, have been studying the progression of
biodiversity associated with their green roofs with encouraging results, resulting in
mandatory green roofs on new flat-roofed buildings similar to Toronto. Some bird
species are beginning to colonise Swiss green roofs. In a study of 115 “wild-
colonised” green roofs in northern French cities, 86% of the colonies were found to
be native plants. This suggests that, once established, biophilic architectural fea-
tures could act as important sites for biodiversity colonisation from the surrounding
bioregion (Brenneisan 2006; Baumann 2006; Madre et al. 2014).
The key to enabling a biodiversity link is to see how plant species and habitat
structures can be designed with a bioregional perspective, not just a local aesthetic
perspective. This will take scientific monitoring and studies to ensure it is working.
4.3 Sense of Place
A bioregional approach to urban design helps to create a sense of place. Beatley and
Newman (2013) make a case that biophilic cities are overlapping in their desire to
be sustainable and resilient through a range of place-oriented strategies that are try-
ing to make the built environment more sensitive to its local, regional and planetary
environment. Newman and Jennings (2008, p 144–155) developed five strategies
for cities to enable them to foster a sense of place. One of those is “to connect the
urban form to the wider bioregion”. To achieve that, local planning authorities must
provide planning criteria and tools and fund necessary biophilic structures to con-
nect the city to its bioregion. Cities located in a particular bioregion need to have the
characteristics of their regional ecosystem at the heart of their biophilic systems.
In Europe, planning regional ecological networks to connect urban and rural

natural systems has a long tradition. A flagship example of biophilic urbanism link-
ing to regional ecosystems has been delivered in Vitoria-Gasteiz in Spain. The capi-
tal city of the Basque Country has had a policy for some time to join urban and rural
natural systems creating a network that provides a number of eco-services as well
enhancing humans’ well-being (Beatley 1999, 2012). The sense of place that has
been generated permeates from the bioregion through to its parks, boulevards, and
buildings. The green infrastructure creates channels connecting the greenbelt and its
parks to the greenery in the city. The green network provides favourable conditions
for enhancing urban and rural biodiversity recreating lost habitats. One of the
important biophilic projects was naturalisation of a stream, which once was chan-
nelled in a concrete pipe. The stream, boarded by native riparian vegetation and
traditionally reinforced embankment, runs along Gasteiz Hiribidea Avenue.
Together with an impressive green envelope at the Palace of Europe, the stream cre-
ates a biodiversity hotspot in the city centre providing habitat to more than 70 but-
terfly species, many insects, and small animals (Beatley 2012) (Fig. 1).
5 Singapore: Biophilic City
Few cities have gone as far as Singapore with their biophilic urbanism. The island
state has revegetated much of its previously cleared areas increasing canopy cover
by 40% between 1986 and 2007. The goal of the city is to move from being a “gar-
den city” to a “city in a garden” or even a “city in a forest”. Canopies have been built
over most major roads and parks with different levels of habitat as well. Corridors
of greenery have been built across the city called Park Connectors providing walk-
ing and cycling access only. Perhaps most impressive though has been the commit-
ment to green roofs and green walls into hundreds of buildings based on a new
science of how to apply it in Singapore’s climate developed by the government and
freely provided. The enthusiasm of government, private sector and community
groups for their biophilic city is evident in a number of films about Singapore
(Newman et al. 2012).
Biophilic urbanism is now being mainstreamed into the town planning system in
Singapore. New buildings in Singapore are now required to have a Green Floor
Plate Ratio which requires them to replace the floor plate of the development with
at least the same and sometimes twice as much greenery as the floor plate area
(Newman 2014; Ong 2003). WOHA, the architects of Singapore’s award-winning
Park Royal Hotel also known as the “jungle hotel”, took great advantage of
Singapore’s green area ratio (GAR) to maximise green space and biodiversity,
achieving a 5 to 1 ratio (Fig. 2).
Singapore’s global leadership in biophilic urbanism has been recognised
(Newman 2014), so other cities are now copying them. For example, Washington
D.C. recently created a green area ratio (GAR), modelled after Singapore’s, which
requires developers to replace the green space they have built over into their
Fig. 1 Regenerated urban stream from stormwater pipe in Vitoria-Gasteiz, bringing bioregional
biodiversity into the city. (Source Photo Agata Cabanek)
building’s roof and facade. D.C.’s new stormwater runoff and GAR fees are expected
to pay for many more biophilic projects (https://doee.dc.gov/GAR).
The goals of linking ecosystem service, biodiversity and sense of place are seen
to overlap in all the new biophilic projects being built in Singapore such as the
Gardens by the Bay which an educational area is showing the whole variety of bio-
diversity in its bioregion and creating multiple habitat sites to demonstrate them
(Fig. 3).
Fig. 2 Singapore’s Park Royal Hotel which achieved a green floor ratio of 5:1. (Source Photo
Peter Newman (Color figure online))
Singapore’s KTP hospital incorporated greenery and biophilic design throughout

the hospital in the hope that it would not only improve healing rates but that this
initiative would encourage butterflies back. Both have happened. A goal of 100 but-
terfly species was set, and after 3 years, 102 species were sighted at the hospital
(Newman and Matan 2012) (Fig. 4).
Three key conclusions about the value of biophilic urbanism and how it is relat-
ing to bioregionalism can be drawn from Singapore:
(a). Singapore shows how the stigma can be removed from density as not being a
feature of green cities.
Singapore’s biophilic urbanism has shown the world how a dense city can regen-
erate natural systems and create far more natural urban systems. It is doing this
between buildings and all over buildings using their structures to create new urban
ecosystems never considered possible before (Fig. 5) of a high-rise green facade.
This is countering the problems of modernist buildings and their unattractive quali-
ties to many people.
Singapore has demonstrated that density probably helps in two ways: (a) it
enables concepts like Park Connectors and the Gardens by the Bay to be developed
Fig. 3 Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay replaced a reclaimed area with a range of technologically
creative habitats and educational facilities for demonstrating bioregional biodiversity. (Source
Photo Agata Cabanek)
Fig. 4 KTP hospital in Singapore showing biophilic features that have made the hospital into a
tourist attraction. (Source Photo Peter Newman)
Fig. 5 High-rise green façade in Singapore high-rise office building. Source Photo Peter Newman
(Color figure online)
as they need intense land uses where distances are short; and (b) it enables the
height of buildings to be used to help create a third dimension in an urban ecosys-
tem. This means that a structure for biological activity can be created around build-
ings similar to the structure of tall forest. Thus the positive element of biophilic
urbanism is that dense cities with high-rise buildings can perhaps provide more
opportunities to build biophilic urban ecosystems than low-density suburbia, due to
their extra habitat opportunities from high walls and flat roofs. This is a big issue as
the world is trying to find ways of preventing car-dependent urban sprawl with all
its oil, climate, health and economic implications, and most cities point to a power-
ful need for increased densities (Newman 2006). However, the need for natural
systems to be part of this policy has always been a question that threatens to
undermine the value in more compact cities. Perhaps biophilic urbanism is a way to
facilitate green and attractive cities that are also far more efficient in resources? To
take away the stigma of density would be a significant bioregional planning contri-
bution from biophilic urbanism now clearly demonstrated in Singapore.
(b). Singapore has shown how a city can make a contribution to local and biore-
gional biodiversity.
Singapore’s NParks started measuring biodiversity when they began their bio-
philic experiments. They have pioneered the Singapore Biodiversity Index which
has been adopted by many cities around the world. These data are now showing that
new and rare species are being found in Singapore long after they were thought to
have disappeared from the urban area. The many local examples set out in a series
of beautiful publications from the city all show rapid increases in birdlife and other
biodiversity as soon as habitat is provided, whether it is using local species or not.
Indeed many of the tree species used to provide the structure of their urban ecosys-
tems are not native, like the rain trees used to structure canopy cover over roads and
parks (because their root systems fit into urban areas). KTP Hospital measures bio-
diversity in birds, fish and butterflies, and all are going up as their biophilic fea-
tures mature.
Biophilic urbanism like that demonstrated in Singapore is unlikely to recreate
the pre-urban ecosystem nor is that ever claimed. But it can do far more to recre-
ate the structure of the ecosystem in any area as it can use the diversity of a city’s
built forms and microclimates to create urban ecosystems far more biodiverse
and complete in their structures than in the unidimensional urban parks and gar-
dens we are used to. In this, it is more like the regenerative design paradigm
mentioned earlier.
(c). Singapore has shown how new kinds of bioregionally oriented urban ecosys-
tems can be imagined developing if biophilic urbanism is taken seriously.
As the biophilic urbanism in Singapore spreads and matures into a more com-
plete coverage of the urban environment, it can be expected that not only will local
biodiversity rise but a better understanding of how urban ecosystems can help bio-
regions regenerate. It is not the same as the pre-city rain forest, but it will have many
features of a rain forest except it will also contain a city full of people.
6 The Next Stage in Singapore’s Biophilic Urbanism
There are two new projects that take Singapore’s biophilic urbanism into new terri-
tory and can help show bioregional outcomes. The projects are new urban areas
being built on sites that are highly degraded – one is a degraded industrial area and
the other is a section of coastline that has been reclaimed using earth fill and recy-
cled rubbish. Their biophilic design strategies as part of their strategic planning are
providing a new opportunity for bioregionalism.
The two new projects are redeveloping areas for extra housing and in the process
are regenerating the natural features of the area using bioregional principles and
then bringing these back into the biophilic urbanism being used in and on buildings.
One is taking a former river delta area that had been drained and channelised into
concrete drains and will recreate some of the former river mouth ecosystem. It will
then take some of the features of this ecosystem back into how the landscape is cre-
ated around and on the buildings for the new housing area. It is thus joining the
natural features of the area into the built form and regenerating the former ecosys-
tem. The other project is on the coast and will be using coastal ecosystem features
to regenerate the area from a reclaimed concrete wall into a thriving natural area; it
will then bring these features into the green roofs and green walls of the new hous-
ing area (Ming et al. 2010; Yabuka 2018).
Biophilic urbanism has emerged in the USA but is not just an American phenom-
enon. Singapore has shown, perhaps more than any other city, how a dense Asian
city can bring nature into the city in new and exciting ways. Perhaps the most
important outcome of Singapore’s biophilic urbanism is that it has proved not only
that density does not preclude a city from bringing nature more intensely into the
daily life of a city but in fact density may assist this.
The rapidity with which Singapore has made this transition from being a mod-
ernist city, where nature was kept at a distance from urban development to embrac-
ing it at every point of the city’s development and buildings, suggests that any city
wanting to make a contribution to biodiversity and to creating a healthier and more
complete urban ecosystem can now do it. The technology of green walls and green
roofs is now available and needs to be trialled in many different urban environ-
ments. The results can be a city where a new kind of urban nature develops that
fulfils the functions of the original ecosystem replaced by the city and which con-
tributes to bioregional outcomes.
7 Conclusions
Bioregional planning and biophilic urbanism are natural allies in many aspects of
environmental planning. There is a need for bioregionalism to bring its insights and
science right into the city and down to the detailed landscaping in and on buildings,
and there is a need for biophilic urbanism to extend their science and insights out
into the corridors and surroundings of the bioregion that supports every city. Such
linkages will need to be demonstrated more and more such as the two new redevel-
opment case studies in Singapore. It is possible that a new kind of biophilic urban-
ism will be created that is more related to the local ecology and bioregional
restoration, gaining its design motivation not from a collection of plants from around
the world but from the restored local ecology. At the same time, the case studies
could be rejuvenating bioregionalism because it grows out of the city and its devel-
opment rather than being just what happens outside and around the city. Such poten-
tial integration of bioregionalism and biophilic urbanism is needed in all cities.
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Co-evolutionary Recovery of the Urban/
Rural Interface: Policies, Planning,
and Design Issues for the Urban Bioregion
David Fanfani
1 Background Framework of the Urbanization Process
The current waves of urbanization and the overall process of the so-called planetary
urbanization if assumed in their more quantitative and diffusive forms – sometimes
emphasized in manifold reports and scholars’ reflections (Brugmann 2010; Glaeser
2011; Angel et al. 2011; UN 2018) – seem to entail a definitive dismission of the
category of the “rural” or its oblivion under an overwhelming veil of “urban trium-
phalism” (Brenner and Schmid 2015, p. 156). Moreover, apparently opposite spatial
forms of heavy density agglomeration – low density dispersion – in the context of
different socio-geographical contexts mirror some dynamics operating at a subter-
ranean level, in accordance with the global neo-capitalist accumulation forms
(Sassen 2014), no matter of which parts of the globe or category of cities we are
dealing with (Robinson 2006). Such different urbanization patterns, despite their
spatial/morphological diversity, share a general effect and have a strong impact on
rural territory resources depletion. This not only under the environmental point of
view – land grabbing, desertification, land sealing, ecosystems disruption, etc. – but
also by affecting socioeconomic values and community legacy, people displace-
ment, agri-food production local system abandonment, and cultural and social heri-
tage loss (Sassen 2014).
However notwithstanding this framework and reversing the matter in a “positive
form,” just for the pervasiveness of the urbanization process, the rural category
seemed lately to gain momentum – at least in the western urbanized areas – because
of the growing awareness of the problems and opportunities that stems from the
increased and strong proximity between urban domains and practices and some-
times residual, rural areas and activities. Paradoxically the strong interference of
urban places, facilities, and infrastructures on environmental systems and the
D. Fanfani (*)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_8
130 D. Fanfani
disruption of patterns of rural productive systems contribute to shed light on the

strategic values of maintaining and protecting rural embedded endowments, this
mainly in the frame to provide conditions for settlements resilience, socioeconomic
fairness, and sustainability. For this reason, all the mentioned impacts, despite their
differences and specificities, call for a general awareness recovery of the relevance
of the endowments and “commons” encompassed under the “rural” territorial cate-
gory and systems and for a deepened knowledge of the undergoing phenomena in
order to set viable policies and planning tools to best hamper and manage these
harmful trends.
Moreover, the putatively called “new regionalism” strand of reflection – espe-
cially in the economic geography field – despite its multifaceted and also contradic-
tory expressions and forms (Hettne and Söderbaum 1998, 2000; Lovering 1999;
Söderbaum and Shaw 2003; Morgan 2004) contributed to shed light on the “thick-
ness” and perspective of the regional scale as background frame to appraise, at least
partially, spatial patterns reconfiguration and flows related to a wider process of
mainly neoliberal economic forces. It shows, in particular, how settlements func-
tionalities and patterns are affected at regional level mainly by a twofold dynamic
of reterritorialization of economic regulatory schemes and productive systems on
the one side and of globalization of capital flows and strategic decision nodes on the
other side also (Jonas 2012; Wheeler 2002), according to a “glocal” hybrid para-
digm (Swyngedow 2004). Moreover “new regionalism” triggered some intellectual
reactions and strategic attentions toward the regional dimension that relates also to
critical reflections about the blindly assumed neoliberal paradigm while proposing
forms and concepts for the recovery of a “progressive” and fair regionalism (Kipfer
and Wirsig 2004; Sites 2004).
In this sense it is worth to note how the scale and scope of the shortly accounted
processes do not allow to set up limited, local, tactical, and short-sighted solutions.
Indeed, urbanization processes and patterns have unfolded by now mainly at the
scale of the city region (Brenner 2002; Rodriguez-Pose 2008; Neumann and Hull
2009) or, at least, at the supra-municipal scale, triggering thus also general opposite
models to look at local development and resources exploitation, depending on if an
heuristic “globalist” framework or critically “endogenous” is assumed.
City region concept-related contributions and debates fed indeed pivotal reflec-
tions focusing not only on the institutional and governance reframing needed to
cope with processes, flows, and functionalities overcoming the institutional, sec-
toral, and scale borders inherited from the past but jointly with these on the new
planning and design demands entailed by the process of metropolitan regions (re)
structuring. This especially considering the impact of city region developments on
environmental systems and related sustainability issues (Wheeler 2009) triggering a
strong demand for designing sustainable settlement patterns and policies (Kelbaugh
1997; Ravetz 2000; Calthorpe and Fulton 2001).
For this reason, it comes in the foreground the importance to adopt a multi-scale
approach to the analysis of urban/rural interactions, viable to appraise, and repre-
senting both local interactions at the level of urban/rural interface, as well as the
wider regional settlement patterns and complementary ecosystem structure.
Co-evolutionary Recovery of the Urban/Rural Interface: Policies, Planning, and Design… 131
2 eframing Spatial Planning and Policies Approach

R
to Enhance and Preserve Urban/Rural Interface
2.1 he Changing and Strategic Nature of the “Rural”

T
and the “Urban/Rural” Interface
As shown above, focusing the planning and governance issues at the city, region, or
metropolitan scale, being aware of the mentioned spatial, functional, and symbolic
pervasiveness of the urbanization process and of its consequences, more generally
means to take dismissal from the idea that it would be possible to deal with spatial
form and environmental issues concerning settlements planning and design, in sim-
ple way by repurposing urban-centered and dualistic, single city/countryside mod-
els. Patterns of urbanization, considering the scale and functional complexity, ask
instead to tackle with the very drivers of the settlement transformation at the scale
and level where they originate and unfold their forces and potentialities and then
with the multi-scale effects of urban sprawl, especially considering the scope of the
impacts on ecosystems.
Indeed rural or more natural featured territories surrounding the urban can no
longer be represented as a still well-defined – environmental and social – world (the
rural) facing the city domain (the urban) but rather as a sum of more complex natu-
ral/anthropogenic patterns, or envelope of structures, ranging from regional to local
scale. Then, in this prospect, urban/rural interface assumes a strategic meaning in
reframing and re-conceptualizing policies, planning analysis methods, and
design tools.
This does not mean to give up completely with the inherited spatial planning
tools and methods, but it entails firstly the necessity to re-conceptualize some cate-
gories and objects of territorial sciences as well as to innovate and better integrate
the methods and tools themselves.
In fact, this does not necessarily entail the withering away of the category of the
rural as such and the rise of a “post-rural” condition mainly framed according to a
re-asserted and totally pervasive urban-centered prospect. It means rather that, con-
trary to the past, the category of “rural” cannot be taken for granted anymore,
whereas, nevertheless, it can still matter, especially in some regional contexts
(Carlow et al. 2016), under conditions that “…require careful contextually specific
and theoretically reflexive investigation that may be seriously impeded through the
unreflexive use of generic labels that predetermine their patterns and pathways of
development and their form and degree of connection to other places” (Brenner and
Schmid 2015, cit. p. 174).
Some years ago, referring to “global south countries” – erstwhile the so-called
development countries – Adriana Allen pointed out on the opportunity to reconsider
the urban/rural interface nature under the complex bundle of flows and relationships
setting the interactions between these two putatively well analytically and opera-
tionally distinguished domains, especially while considering the twofold and hybrid
nature of the urban/rural interface (Allen 2003, 2010). Partly anticipating the
132 D. Fanfani
debates on urbanization forms in western – or global north – countries, especially

related to low density settlement, or sprawl, expansion (EEA 2006), Allen state-
ments best account for “…the artificial distinction between ‘urban’ and ‘rural’, a
distinction that (mis)informs not only the setting up of institutional arrangements
but , also, and more broadly, the deployment of planning approach and tools” (Allen
2003, cit., p. 135).
Acknowledging the paradigmatic shift in the planning approach entailed by the
introduction of environment and ecologic matters, Allen went on upholding the
importance of framing settlement spatial planning tool according a multi-scale and
strategic approach aimed to overcome the “urban-rural dichotomy ingrained in
planning systems” (Allen 2003, cit. p. 135) and reasserting how the “ecological,
economic and social functions performed by and in the peri-urban interface affect
either city and the countryside” (Allen 2003, cit. p. 135). It especially refers to the
necessity of addressing and designing – according to a multi-scale prospect – a
theoretical framework and operational approach suitable to gather rural, regional,
and urban planning as three distinctive fields of action that overlap at the urban/rural
interface. An approach that seems to be best suited to consider the increasing
demand for settlements sustainability, resilience, and fairness especially under-
pinned by a new search for environmental and resource access justice (Fainstein
2011; Pezzoli 2013; Pezzoli and Leiter 2016).
2.2 Regional-Scale Model for Urban/Rural Joint Strategic

A
Planning: The Co-evolutionary Prospective
of the Urban Bioregion
Drawing on Allen contribution, the regional scale turns out to be the best suited
spatial level to set out policies and planning tools to frame either rural development
planning or urban-focused planning as joint levels of regulation that could affect
urban/rural interaction. Considering this, and especially the environment and eco-
systemic requirements that underpin the pursue and establishment of resilient, self-
relied, and sustainable settlement patterns, the bioregional prospect turns out to be
of interest as possible conceptual operating paradigm and reference (Scott Cato
2013; James and Scott Cato 2014). This mainly drawing on its capacity to allow for
jointly treat urban and rural/ecosystem issues considering urban settlements as a
whole; a theoretical element that found lately a further deepening under the cate-
gory of “urban bioregion.”
Adopting a comprehensive reporting and a methodologically correct approach
to bioregionalism allows to seize how the category of urban bioregion strongly
draws on bioregional traditions and cultural legacy.1 In this respect it is also argued
1
The theoretical legitimacy to fully acknowledge and refer urban bioregion concept as a strand or
more recent evolution of bioregional legacy deserves at least some short caveats aimed to
recall how:
that – according to a vision of “urban bioregionalism” – “…utilizing bioregional

ideals in urban areas can contribute to an epistemological shift in the human rela-
tionship to the environment and natural resources from the current condition”
(Church 2015, p. 2). As introduced by Atkinsons (1992), this model expresses a
peculiar interpretation of the bioregional legacy that, without overlooking its
eco-centric facets and origins, develops a vision of mutual supportive relationship
between settlements patterns and form and ecosystems structure and functions.
Atkinsons fully assumes the eco-centric bioregional starting point as a call not
for a shift toward a utopic, bounded uncontaminated place where to rest, but
as – according to Sale (1991) – a pragmatic and operational perspective to achieve
places where to inhabit well, now and for the future. According to Atkinsons, sus-
tainability hinges on a renewed urban regional symbiosis aimed to gain self-reliance
in coping with the economic bias and unbalances stemming not as much from a
destiny of backwardness, but especially from multinational corporate-driven global
markets. In this direction the urban bioregion model is upheld as an alternative one,
best suited to counter economic extractive and exhaustive forces, by recovering
proximity economic relationship also recurring to “selective regional closure”
enabling and fostering internal markets affordability and viability (Sthör and
Tödtling 1977).
By the way it is worth to note that the mentioned underlying “extractive” streams
lately concerned not only the so-called, erstwhile, “third world” regions but also –
although with different forms and effects – the “global north” regions as they further
developed and unfolded under a global trend lately fueled also by the hyper-financial
and de-territorialized turn of global capitalism (Sassen 2014, cit.).
Furthermore, the paradigm of urban bioregion meets important analogies – and
well fits to – with outstanding legacies in the field of regional planning and rural
development. Among others we can refer to socio-spatial patterns that were yet
envisioned with the Agropolitan model devised by Friedmann and Douglass that
represents an interesting insight in this direction (Friedmann and Douglass 1978;
–– Bioregionalism is not to conceive as a formally and definitively stated or static body of thought,
rather a “tradition of many voices” (Aberley 1999), encompassing arts, habits expression, com-
munity relationships, and, also, spatial and environmental planning fields of action, often in
advocacy and bottom-up form.
–– Bioregionalism origins as a call for re-inhabiting practices according to places of nature and
endowments (Berg and Dasmann 1977), and then it cannot be overlooked the intrinsic relation-
ship between nature and culture that every inhabiting action entails and, for that, how, neverthe-
less in co-evolution with the ecosystem recovery and reproduction, settlement-related issues
still matter.
–– As well shown in credited and well-sounded contribution (Thayer 2003, pp. 155–156), biore-
gional spatial planning approach also strongly hinges on the “culturalist” and “organicist” roots
of American regionalist movement where the outstanding contribution of RPAA members and,
among others, of Lewis Mumford and Benton MacKaye addressed and tried for a – we could
now say optimistic – “neo-technic” synthesis between nature, culture, and technology suited to
harness, starting from the natural structure as “indigenous” “counter-mold” (MacKaye 1928),
the metropolitan “deluge” and built up an inhabited region as a “collective artwork”
(Mumford 1938).
134 D. Fanfani
Friedmann 1981). Indeed, despite its main and original focus on Asian developing
countries, and for the previous considerations, this model deserves attention also in
our reflection about western countries urbanized contexts. Such a model allows
indeed it tries to cope with issues of integrated rural development related to the
necessity to achieve and recover sustainable and balanced urban-rural relationships
according to a bottom-up, self-relied development model and envision an ecologi-
cally tailored polycentric settlement pattern. In this prospect, a pro-active and socio-
economic empowered role on behalf of the rural domain is assumed as opposed to
the hierarchical urban-rural trickle-down based development mechanism.
3 patial Planning and Policies: A New Agenda

S
for the Urban/Rural Interface in the Urban Bioregion
As underlined the special focus of this chapter is finally aimed to frame a set of
issues and related tools aimed to best point out, manage, and master the complex
interlocked wholeness of flows, relationships, and endowments entailed by conceiv-
ing a co-evolutionary view of the urban/rural domain development under the urban
bioregion paradigm.
Such a paradigm allows to consider the urban/rural interface as a “membrane”
suitable to best distinguish two well-defined, albeit communicating (energy, matter,
information), domains that can cooperate for a healthy and fair settlement system
(see also the Saragosa and Chiti chapter in this volume, ‘Bioregion and Spatial
Configurations. The Co-evolutionary Nature of the Urban Ecosystem). In this
regard, Allen mentioned a contribution well focused on a methodological/opera-
tional reframing of policies especially based on an integrated, multi-scale strategic
planning/policies approach. Although drawing on this contribution, a further deep-
ening seems necessary – assuming the urban bioregion as a co-evolutionary model –
to best cope with the western/European contexts and also considering the time lag
that separates us from then and the related new issues entered in the debate.
In doing so it is worth to proceed by pointing out, on the one side, more directly
some spatial planning general issues and, then, referring such issues to the current
institutional framework of policies and planning methods and, on the other, address-
ing especially the necessity and conditions to overhaul them in order to achieve a
better urban/rural integrated model of planning and governance.
3.1 ew Matters and Themes for Spatial Planning

N
at the Urban/Rural Interface
According to Friedmann and Weaver (1979cit.), adopting an urban bioregionalist

approach calls for the overcoming of a mainly functionalist model of regional plan-
ning. It means, especially in the European contexts, to appraise the “local thickness”
of historical, cultural, ecological endowments that triggered and sustained regional

and local development as well as a thriving urban civilization.
In this prospect, spatial planning, conceived as an activity aimed to coordinate
many disciplines and to enliven and feed a cross-disciplinary exchange, is asked to
consider especially some, relatively, new interconnected fields of activity or issues,
among which it seems worth to mention:
–– The recovery of a new settlement’s metabolism
Urban/rural interface turns out to be of increased relevance in allowing and sup-
porting the recovery of the missed metabolism that historically – at least until the
dawn of the industrial revolution – featured the relationship between urban environ-
ment and surrounding agro-ecosystems (Bellamy Foster 1999; Gallent et al.
2006; Andersson et al. 2016, pp. 275–331). Flows of energy and matter (e.g., power
supply, food and drinking water provisioning, raw materials, sewage treatment and
waste management, GhG emissions, etc.) are all currently mainly structured accord-
ing to a linear strongly entropic and wide-ranging networks model. Re-localizing
urban settlements according to a bioregional approach (Thayer 2013) entails a
strong reduction of these networks’ range and a general redirection toward circular
flow schemes and a cut of harnessing of fossil fuel in providing commodities and
facilities. As previously pointed out, urban/rural interface could be envisioned as the
“membrane” through which many of these flows transit and that could allow to
provide service to deliver resources (e.g., ecosystem services; see AA.VV 2005) in
such a way to avoid the recourse to highly expensive and complex technological
equipment and devices.
Moreover, this kind of ecosystemic turns in urban services and related manage-
ment and delivering technologies, among other goals, will also allow for a general
improvement of the quality of urban and periurban environment along with its ame-
nities and attractiveness. This kind of shift entails, in terms of spatial planning and
design tools and policies, to pay peculiar attention to the ecosystem dimension in
accordance with a multifunctional and integrated mode of landscape ecological
design (Jonhston and Lovell 2000) especially at the urban/rural “edge” (Tjallingii
2000). That either in analytical terms and in setting the various sectoral policies fol-
lowing an integrated and coordinated policy approach.
–– Pursuing resilient and biophilic settlements and urban environment
The previous point firstly affects the spatial planning and territory design, whose
action translates in a more complex and integrated approach to the urban/regional
project. This especially concerns the approach to built environment structures
recovery and retrofitting (Beatley and Newman 2013; Church 2015, cit.) and par-
ticularly the adoption and recovery of some nature-based techniques in reclaiming
basic environmental functionalities of ecological systems. It is worth noting how in
this prospect, turns out to be of relevance the “retro-innovation” concept, as –
according to Stuiver (2006) – conceived as smart recovery of old affordable and
context fitting methods and operating principles in a completely new socio-technic
regime but assuming low-entropy models and techniques of intervention.
136 D. Fanfani
Multifunctional and integrated “eco-design” of ecosystemic services and “struc-

tures” allows to best cope with the challenging issue stemming from the dramatic
effects of climatic change and global warming (Wilson and Piper 2010) but, at the
same time, to operate with the prospect of a “transitional model” where ecological
challenges play as a stimulus to enhance a livable, healthier, and vibrant built envi-
ronment. It is not difficult to mention how in this new endeavor field we can gather
many recent issues at the top of the list of public policies and design debate. Among
these, it is worth to recall the wide-ranging theme of “green and blue infrastructure”
mainly aimed to point out the necessity to cope with a regenerative management and
design model concerning either the residual green spaces – be they biodiversity
reserve, active farmland area, or also wastelands – or the complex and often dis-
rupted hydraulic and riverine structures at both the watershed and local scale. This
issue was fed, at the European level, by manifold research and program activities
also aimed to point out policies and design criteria to support experiences and proj-
ect of rivers and streams “daylighting.” This as much to enhance landscape and
ecological quality of the built environment as resilience in the face of climate change
effects (run-off water catchment, urban microclimate improvement). Also, the
growing attention paid to the design and management – sometimes according to
bottom-up initiatives – of urban farming and urban agriculture practices can be
considered as a step forward in the direction of urban resilience achieving based on
the recovery of some urban/rural metabolism functionings. In a wider sense, that
encompasses also social, educational, and cultural meanings. This field of policies,
design, and action can also be referred to the new conception of the urban and settle-
ment entailed by the “biophilic city” concept as contended especially by some
scholars (Beatley and Newman 2013) and also by Newman and Zingoni De Baro
themselves in Vol. II of this book.
–– Morphological/spatial issues: devising integrated design methods for poly-
nuclear settlement and urban systems
The approach to urban/rural interface not as a result of a footloose and unchecked
urbanization process – and then as a space, at the best, to mitigate as much as pos-
sible urban impact – but as a “counter-mold” which underpins new balanced settle-
ment forms at the various scales, entails some main design and policy design
implications. First of all, to operate in the direction to “fix” the inherited metabolic
rift of the modern city and metropolis and of steady resilience gains facing climate
change and global warming effects – based on a retrieved green-blue wide-ranging
infrastructure – means to explore the necessity to “split” the modern hierarchical
city region form and pursue a well-balanced and cooperative polycentrism. In this
direction it is not possible quoting in few lines the wide-ranging literature that con-
cerns this aspect in terms of spatial analysis and settlements models, addressing
sustainability matters related to urban form conceived either as in its various pat-
terns at the regional scale or as a complex mix of spatial and functional land use
patterns at the urban and local one (Alexander et al. 1977, pp. 3–40; Kohr 1976;
Batty 2001; Banister 2005; Magnaghi 2010, pp. 208–241; Lambregts and
Zonnenveld 2003; Cook and Lara 2013; Ravetz et al. 2013). Moreover it is also
worth to note how this issue also affects governing power matters mainly related to
the opportunity of devolution of political and administrative power at the local level
(Wills 2016), in order to reframe development and resource uses and decisional
processes, underlying especially the re-rapprochement of ecological economy and
political ecology (M’Goonigle 1999). In general terms it seems worth to recall the
relevance of a methodological stance aimed to explore the possibilities in the direc-
tion of the adoption of polycentric settlement patterns and models. In this direction,
drawing on bioregional paradigm, some contributions get a step further beyond a
functional/spatial approach, trying to deepen “how” to analyze and represent spatial
patterns aimed to achieve sustainable design goals and environment and settlement
recovery at the regional scale (Gotlieb 1996) based also on long-lasting built and
natural environment heritage.
In this framework, Thayer, starting from Alexander’s seminal concept of pattern
language (Alexander et al. 1977, cit.), goes on in defining a more integrative idea of
“bio-generative” spatial patterns that “...represent the best long-term fit of human
intervention with geomorphic, climatic, biotic, and cultural influences” (Thayer
2003, p. 166). This concept of pattern is bio-generative since it is aimed to spatially
represent – as a signature – a (life)place-specific co-evolutionary interaction between
ecological and human (cultural) domain framed in the context of resource limits and
their regenerative possibilities.
It is worth referring how, despite a bio-generative pattern, sequence moves on
through some multi-scale operating levels – pattern model design method is also
strongly underpinned on a fine-grained scale and bottom-up approach. This often
calls for with an advocacy or facilitating commitment on behalf of planners in fos-
tering and empowering participatory processes for local communities and for bring-
ing in the foreground ordinary knowledge and skills enhancement. Concerning the
aims of this chapter, bio-generative pattern concept is clearly at odds – how also
Thayer points out – with market-driven model of settlement where suitable and co-
evolutionary interaction between urban and rural domain fades out, replaced by low
density housing patterns mirroring metropolization and hierarchical processes at the
regional scale.
Drawing especially on Thayer’s contribution, and landscape studies legacy,
Silbernagel envisions patterns as a result of an eco-cultural integrative approach to
landscape analysis and representation (Silbernagel 2005). In this framework, place-
based patterns are the result of the complex composition of natural and material
(mainly quantitative) elements and qualitative ones, related to socio-cultural fea-
tures represented through manifold sources (e.g., oral, drawn, arts, etc.), also
employing GIS tool in innovative way. These patterns set the ground to compose
spatial “horizontal” narratives – conceived as opposed to the traditional “vertical”
landscape ecology overlay mapping method – which result as syntactic articulation
of ecological and cultural facts. Moreover, according to Silbernagel, this model of
bio-cultural spatial pattern tailoring and application hinges on an historical and
cross-disciplinary prospective, and it is aimed to unfold and feed a planning and
design process that allows to foster sense of place belongings and stewardship
concern.
138 D. Fanfani
Place-based and cross-disciplinary description of regional historical thickness,

aimed to point out some long-lasting regional patterns, also represents the basic ele-
ments of the approach in the regional analysis and design of the Italian territorialist
school. Starting from the previously described urban bioregion model, territorialist
approach (see Magnaghi 2010cit., pp. 208–241) sets the issue of the urban/rural – in
either analytical or design terms – by reversing the prevailing hierarchical core-
periphery and urban-centered relationship which features the current development
of metropolitan region settlement pattern, by opposing and envisioning a multi-
centered pattern of “city of cities” or “city of villages” based on (Figs. 1, 2, 3, and 4):
–– Acknowledgment and representation of the long-lasting and “living” heritage
(“Territorial Patrimony”) issued by the co-evolutionary relationship between
natural endowments and anthropogenic and cultural action.
–– Definition of the main living patterns of the built environment (“structural invari-
ants”) and/or of the “long-lasting” territorial structure that can support – at vari-
ous scales – a sustainable design approach and goals (strategic scenario and
“territory design”) and a renewed settlement polycentric structure.
–– Bottom-up and advocacy planning action aimed to enhance, support, and
empower local society grassroots and socially produced initiatives and goals, in
setting planning targets and local development projects (Img. 1 and 2). This also
with the aim to feed and foster as much as possible self-government practices
and a federalist approach vs. hierarchical and exogenously driven settings,
strongly embodied in the current deliberative and decisional processes.
–– Definition of a shared strategic scenario design and of a territory project aimed
to jointly recover the agro-ecosystem structure and a multi-centered settlement
pattern.
The roughly rendered cognitive, spatially framed, and political sequence is
aimed either to feed a new vision for spatial arrangements and settlement design at
the various scales or to interact, also in critical and dialectical terms, with the inher-
ited, market-driven, institutional bodies and practices.
Referring to urban/rural interface issues, the described approach turns out to be
suitable to completely reframe business as usual approach to settlement design,
appreciating especially long-lasting living patterns in supporting and weaving a new
polycentric city form and settlement structure. What once was classified as periph-
ery becomes the center of a completely reframed “identity-based” settlements struc-
ture. In this vision, heritage and local endowments at the urban/rural interface allow
to devise “…new city walls (that) go newly to define and bounding the urban land-
scape as ‘common’: green belts and biotic corridors that enmesh as a system urban,
periurban and regional parks, (agricultural, fluvial, naturals) thrusting down as
‘green hands’ in the city open spaces by regenerating public spaces and connecting
them with surrounding agricultural spaces; water systems – be they natural or arti-
ficial-, managed as city and territory metabolic systems that redesign the urban and
agrarian landscape threads; (…) the densification of the built environment and the
Fig. 1 Long-lasting settlement structure. (Source Master thesis “La città Policentrica dell’Agna”,
dott.ssa F. Giallorenzo, Dir. Prof. D. Fanfani, 2017)
140 D. Fanfani
Fig. 2 Built and environmental heritage: the “Territorial Patrimony.” (Source Master thesis “La
città Policentrica dell’Agna”, dott.ssa Giallorenzo, Dir. Prof. D. Fanfani, 2017)
urban rehabilitation of the fringe zones conceived as urban view on belt agricultural
and wooded parks” (Magnaghi 2010cit., pp. 212–213)2 (Figs. 5 and 6).
Finally, it turns out that the recovery of the underpinning ecosystemic and “mor-
phogenetic” features of the urban/rural interface allows to entrench and support
place specificity and endowments and to recover polycentric systemic relations as
well as to overcome the concept of periphery.
3.2 I ntegrating Rural Development Policies and Tools

with Spatial and Environment Planning
Since the onset, the raising issue of spatial planning and design at the urban/rural
interface posed the necessity – as far as dealing with a domain where run through
the manifold functions and activities – to go beyond or, at least, to integrate tradi-
tional land use-based planning tools (Andersson et al. 2016) or master planning
approach (Allen 2003, cit) for the recovery of a strategic relational approach (Abeele
and Leinfelder 2007). Later – mainly in relation with the emergence of a multidi-
mensional call for settlement resilience, especially entailed by climate and social
2
Author’s translation
Fig. 3 Strategic scenario for a bioregional settlement recovery in the Prato-Pistoia area. (Source:
Master thesis “La città Policentrica dell’Agna”, dott.ssa F. Giallorenzo, Dir. Prof. D. Fanfani,
2017). (a) The Strategic Scenario: concept. (b) The Strategic Scenario Spatial Project
changes – this shared awareness between planners, practitioners, activists, and pol-
icy agents slightly shifted to address issues mainly related to some “metabolic or
ecosystem services” (AA.VV. 2005, cit.) that the surrounding rural areas can deliver
for the urban environment. In this framework urban/rural interface becomes the
strategic domain and pivotal resource where it is possible to develop and re-embed,
among others, local food systems (Morgan and Sonnino 2010) and the regional
renewable energy system (Van den Dobbelsteen 2008) and, generally, to try and find
out the room for the recovery of regenerating circular resources employment
schemes. Beyond these issues of local development, treated in the following para-
graph, this kind of shift poses the twofold question of the strategic role performed
by agriculture and farmland in – possibly – delivering such a service and, moreover,
of a general reframing of such an activity in multifunctional, rentable, and sustain-
able terms, not only for the sake of urban resident but also for the farmers’ health
and farming economic viability.
Pursuing joint goals of agriculture qualification and profitability, ecological and
urban/rural landscape enhancement, calls to focus about the way how to best match
traditional rural development tools – referring mainly to Agriculture European pol-
icy (CAP)for farm activity support and related to agri-environment measures – with
spatial planning procedures at the various scales. Farming on the urban surrounding
areas gains in this framework an active role of co-production – jointly with the
urban domain – of “commons” and of a more sustainable built environment that can
142 D. Fanfani
Fig. 4 Master plan of the polycentric urban system. (Source: Master thesis “La città Policentrica
dell’Agna”, dott.ssa F. Giallorenzo, Dir. D. Fanfani, 2017)
Img. 1 and 2 Participative design sessions activities. (Source Photo F. Giallorenzo courtesy)
be best pursued by adopting a strategic approach to planning also by reinforcing

partnership and bottom-up and multi-level governance (Andersson et al. 2016, cit,
pp. 181–200; Lazzarini 2019). Some main points that address the mentioned recov-
ery of planning/rural development matching refer especially to:
–– Adopting the regional landscape planning level as a multi-scale framework
which allows to enforce the adoption and implementation of the rural develop-
ment strategies by supporting especially – also with ranking rewards mecha-
nism – place-specific measures, addressing ecosystems regeneration and local
rural market jointly with agri-food systems enhancing
–– Conceiving the sub-regional landscape planning goals as strategic elements and
guidelines to match with strategic choices, land use directives, and rules adopted
at the municipal level
–– Promoting local actors and stakeholder’s involvement in setting projects and
actions at the local or also intermunicipal level
–– Establishing and promoting specifically tailored periurban management tools
(e.g., agricultural parks, rural districts, agri-urban contracts) supported by formal
public-private partnerships and agency also adopting CLLD governance model
–– Strongly reinforcing inter-sectorial and cross-scale collaboration between public
bodies and offices as ordinary government practice for policies and project set-
ting and delivering
Finally, this set of issues features the call to achieve a new policy and planning
agenda without which it seems hardly possible to grasp with the goal of a renewed
“pact” and metabolism between city and countryside.
3.3 rban/Rural Place-Based Development Policies

U
as Expression of Self-Relied Re-embedded Economies
Regarding urban/rural interface, drawing on urban bioregion approach, it clearly

comes out that the point is not so much how to best accommodate urban housing
developments or “services and equipment” for urban life in a pleasant and,
144 D. Fanfani
Fig. 5 Commune of Prato (Tuscany), green agri-urban inner fringe, and recovery of territorial
connections. (Source Bachelor Degree Thesis, R. Rosa, C. Margaritelli, Dir. Prof. D. Poli, Co.dir.
Prof. D. Fanfani)
putatively, sustainable way but to conceive urban/rural interface as an “active”

domain suitable to feed new place-based economies aimed especially to regional
and local market and to feed urban/rural metabolism. That means to explore and
design this domain not as what is “neither urban and no more rural” to support as
much as possible urban “external dis-economies,” but as underpinning endowment
of new proximity, self-relied, and resilient economies for “proto-bioregions” (James
Fig. 6 Commune of Prato (Tuscany), Master Plan Project of the green agri-urban inner fringe.
(Source Bachelor Degree Thesis, R. Rosa, C. Margaritelli, Dir. Prof. D. Poli, Co.dir.Prof.
D. Fanfani)
and Scott Cato 2014) based on regional amenities and places endogenous values
(Power 1996). In this prospect, some of the goods and services that this domain can
deliver are encompassed by the previous mentioned category of ecosystem services
(MEA 2005, cit.) as basic functions for the re-inhabiting and re-embedding process,
strongly related to the “transitional age” also echoed in the title of this book, and
envisioning a completely reframed energy regime (Hopkins 2008; Thayer 2013
cit.). According to MEA, these services are aimed to different goals – sustaining,
regulation, and delivering – which correspond to a different way of economic
appraisal and expression. Indeed, not all of them are valuable according to the mar-
ket price system even though they do embody some real “use” or “existence” eco-
nomic values. Some others, instead, allow to trigger and feed some new re-localized
exchange economies and value chains with strong multiplier effects for the local
economic system, especially based on retrieved and regenerated amenities and
regional heritages (Power, cit. pp. 7–13). In this latter category, we can surely men-
tion and ascribe, as the most meaningful but no single example, the creation of agri-
food local systems (Morgan and Sonnino 2010, cit.), the re-embedding of smart and
“vernacular” (Dobbelsteen 2008) regional energy system suitable to exploit the
potentialities of place renewable energy sources or touristic system based on “slow”
practices and fruition of local heritage and amenities (Paquot 2014). Anyway,
despite the market values that can be assigned to this latter kind of economic chains,
146 D. Fanfani
it should not be overlooked that, being often based – due to proximity – on retrieved
trust and direct relationship between consumer and producers, these economies also
allow to recreate new civic and community relationships as well as place belonging
sense and stewardship concern. In this way they are really based on forms of co-
production that can feed the community and social thickness of the goods market,
toward a responsible and integrated well-being production model and “civil
economy.”
4 inal Remarks: The Strategic Role of the Urban/

F
Rural Interface
Reflection on urban/rural interface “transitional” domain turns out to be of strategic

relevance in addressing issues stemming from the pervasive and mainly unrestrained
urbanization process affecting global north as well as global south countries. In this
framework the planning and design of urban/rural interface underpins an “inver-
sion” (De Lestrange 2016) of the traditional urban-centered city/countryside dis-
course, by reversing the view and countering or mastering urban development
starting from a vision of the underpinning role of rural and periurban areas. That
entails to think about urban/rural interaction no more in oppositional terms but in
co-evolutionary ones. This means that the matter is no longer how to best master
and design urban developments according to real estates, housing markets, or land
rent values providing smaller damage to natural values, but how to co-produce and
recover a co-evolutionary relationship and sustainable and livable settlement pat-
terns starting from the “counter-mold” constituted by ecosystem/metabolic func-
tioning and farmland economic, cultural, and landscape values. The chapter shows
how the urban bioregion model – as also better described by Magnaghi in the con-
tribution to this volume – allows to best frame the urban/rural topic conceiving
human settlements and built environment according to, although sometimes weak-
ened and withered, their specific regional wholeness and long-lasting and regenera-
tive features, where natural ecosystems, as well as cultural and natural structures
and meanings, act and develop as mutually reproductive. This underpinning and
fostering thriving (re)inhabited places as well as regionally based and self-relied
economies. For planning policies and tools as well as for design approaches that
shift toward a co-evolutionary prospective, this entails some consequences. Indeed,
agro-ecologic patterns recovery, enhancement, and design ask planners and the
institutional planning system to adopt and strongly try to develop integrated
approach, tools, and practices, also fostering bottom-up and inclusive methods. The
latter point especially aims to sustain “co-production” and mutuality between urban
and rural “agents” or citizens, creating a sense and awareness of belonging to a
common place to be looked after together and, finally, periurban farming and farmer
empowerment for an “active ruralship” (Fanfani 2012). On the planning and poli-
cies system side, the previous considerations entail a not easy endeavor, especially
to overcome “path-dependent” behaviors. Indeed, the need to retrieve the relation-

ship between agro-ecosystem issues and settlements regeneration goals – especially
in addressing resilience and self-reliance aims – asks for a deepened approach to
multi-level and inter-sectorial policies. This is a suitable approach to overcome an
urban/rural divide which, despite its endurance and helpfulness in codifying spatial
rules and allowing the appraise of functional equipments disposal, seems to be no
more fruitful and effective in the heuristic, operational, and conceptual terms. An
approach to be pursued is especially by adopting relational analysis and design
frameworks to reveal and acknowledge new spatial practices and by supporting
effective planning and design tools and policies for more balanced, self-relied, and
regional-based settlement patterns.
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Agriurban Commons. Which Resistance
and Adaptation Processes
to Metropolization?
Pierre Donadieu
1 Introduction
Metropolitan regions are currently vulnerable, much more than yesterday and less
than tomorrow. Due to a growing concentration of populations in often very dense
urban areas, citizens are exposed to environmental, health and alimentary risks that
question the security of property and people. In the face of these real (or sometimes
imagined) dangers and of these changes in current climatic and energy transitions,
the possibilities of resilience1 of the inhabitants are very variable. They depend
above all on the political and economic capabilities of public authorities to organize
these adaptations in an effective and equitable way. When these capacities are
reduced or insufficient, an alternative (among others) exists: the pooling of projects,
values, goods and services which favours the initiatives of the inhabitants to self-
organize and take charge of their own resilience, with or without the assistance of
the state and the public authorities of territorial collectivities.
In France as in other countries, the renewed idea of commons has emerged in the
last few years as an opportunity offered to the democratic exercise on a territorial
scale, for land planners and inhabitants alike. This text sheds light on this emergence
in France, by privileging a category of commons whose purpose focuses on the
agricultural and food issue in and around the cities: the agriurban commons.2 It will
1
Capacity for the inhabitants, after a disruption or a crisis of some kind, to restore their initial state,
either physical or psychological or either to adapt to an evolution of this state
2
Many definitions of agriurban agriculture have been given for the past 20 years. We will define it
as any activity of vegetal and animal production located in or nearby urban areas, on native or
artificial soils. In addition to food and non-food goods, it produces environmental ecosystemic,
social, and cultural services that make these practices become “a social movement of re-appropri-
P. Donadieu (*)
École Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles, Marseille, France
e-mail: p.donadieu@ecole-paysage.fr

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_9
152 P. Donadieu
first define agriurban commons, then the way agriurban commons projects are built.
Finally, it will sketch out some ideas to think about the future of urban agriculture.
2 Agriurban Commons
In France, the idea of preserving or creating agricultural activities in the urban com-
munities, instead of eliminating them, has become a political project during the past
15 years (Donadieu 1998, 2013). These initiatives may involve social oppositions to
the urbanization of agricultural areas or the development of new or former food sup-
ply proximity activities (short sales channels, so-called organic agricultural prod-
ucts). They all share the idea of pooling common interests between producers and
consumer inhabitants.
2.1 The Common
Commons includes what is built and pooled, (Dardot et Laval 2014): goods (com-
mon), services, human relationships, projects, moral values, relationships with
space and nature …. this simple definition, although tautological, given by a phi-
losopher and a sociologist, should not make us forget the long history of the notion
of common: in Roman law, then in the reflexions of the Fathers of the Church (i.e.
Thomas d’Aquin), in the sociological and economical works of Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon and Karl Marx in the nineteenth century, in those of socio-economist and
economy Nobel Prize Elinor Ostrom (1990, 2010) and in many others that followed,
in France in particular (Orsi 2013; Coriat 2015; Calame and Ziaka 2015).
It should be remembered that the idea of common is under the control of moral,
political, legal and economic sciences and that its essence is based on the necessary
pooling of interests between commoners, English term that can be translated as
“appropriateurs” in French (Ostrom 2010). Let us remember that the notion of com-
mon is not given but co-constructed by societies in a specific historical and cultural
context. It implies communities, institutions and rules for the reproduction and
transmission of what is shared by goods’ users: water, pastures and wood ... just as
much as the moral and spiritual values of societies that rely to this good (Donadieu
2014a, b; Donadieu 2016a). There are no commons without interest or destiny
communities.3
ation of the urban area” (Duchemin 2015). The expression “agriurban” is a contraction of urban
agriculture.
3
The destiny community assumes the solidarity and responsibility of those who are involved in an
unclear process (the future of Europe for instance), while the community of interest mainly ensures
the defence of the identity and values common to its members (professional community,
trade union).
Agriurban Commons. Which Resistance and Adaptation Processes to Metropolization? 153
The co-constructed common converges with the legal idea of “a resource [for
which] are established a repartition system of rights (access, extraction, addition,
disposal…) and a governance structure ensuring that the rights and obligations of
each of the participants in the common are respected” (Coriat, Le retour des com-
muns, p. 47). In this respect, this co-construction involves both private and public
logics, going thus beyond them or integrating them. It generally involves chosen
modalities of common governance of the goods and services concerned.
2.2 Territorial Common
Let us use again the definition of a French geographer: “Territory is at the same time
an economic, ideological and political (therefore, social) appropriation of the area
by some groups that give a particular representation of themselves and of their his-
tory” (Di Méo 2000).
In a more general way, territories are interaction areas between physical and
human areas. They are appropriate, governed and claimed by human groups of all
kinds. They are mainly jurisdiction areas. They can be hierarchized, and their perim-
eter is variable in time and space. Their administration, thanks to the regulations
elaborated by their governance, is at the heart of social organization which is seek-
ing compromise between two very different goals: on one hand, to meet the demand
and interests of local scale stakeholders, structured by the family, social, profes-
sional and institutional networks, and, on the other hand, to manage in a sustainable
way the availability and the fair allocation of resources and the use of natural
resources (soil, water, biodiversity, etc.) on a local and global scale. Built through
historical, social and political processes, the relationship to soil and space in a terri-
tory concerns the supranational scale, the nation, the region, a group of municipali-
ties, or a single municipality, as well as an urban or rural neighbourhood. “Territory
is of course a space with variable geography, but it still remains a space organized
to act together” (Vial et Dhérissard 2015).
The idea of territorial common is thus referred to the social and political con-
struction of goods, of services and of places pooled together as commons on these
different scales with the contradictions, tensions and conflicts generated by interests
often divergent. It is the reduction of these divergences that is at work in the emerg-
ing experiences of current agriurban projects.4 Their meaning can be appropriated
by a collective “we” in the perimeter of the concerned territory. In opposition to
what is defined as “their” or “his/her” good, the possessive pronoun creates a shared
sense of solidarity, responsibility and real or symbolic appropriation by a plurality
of individuals. For instance, in the jurisdiction area of an agriurban municipality,
“our” market gardeners and “our” gardens” may be designated spontaneously by
4
The idea of agriurban project was born in the early 2000s from a policy of the French Ministry of
Agriculture, implemented on an experimental basis in the Ile-de-France region (12 projects).
154 P. Donadieu
Fig. 1 Vegetable gardens to rent, Gally’s farms, Versailles’ plains (west of Paris), 2016. Source
Photo Pierre Donadieu
some inhabitants, while others may indicate “their fields and their greenhouses” if
the usages and perceptions of space by groups different from one another separate
places with distinct or even opposed representations. There would therefore be as
many territorial commons, of shared or unshared spatiality, as there are many differ-
ent ways to make use of physical space in several5 (Fig. 1).
2.3 Resist Together: A Form of Common
In France, there are many forms of social and economic self-organization which
translate these urban collective resistances. Some of them mobilize agricultural or
gardening practices, for instance, in Paris, the Urban Orchards association (Vergers
Urbains) created in 2012 and the hundred or so shared gardens that have flourished
in the capital, often with the support of municipalities.6 They follow the wake of the
Green Guerrillas (or Guerilla Gardening) initiated in New York by the artist Liz
5
This anthropo-geographical position can be reconciled to the eco-culturalist theory of bio-region-
alism (Berg and Dasman 1977) which seeks to integrate, as Alberto Magnaghi (2014) does, locally,
the notions of territory and environmental ecology.
6
In the Île-de-France region, the Francilian observatory of urban and biodiversity agriculture,
established in 2015, estimates at about 750 the number of family and community gardens. Only
1% has a market economy.
Christy in the 1970s. Movement which triggered birth to the community gardens
worldwide (Paquot 2016, pp. 99–103; Lagneau, in Urban Agriculture op. cit., p. 71).
In France, the Pedagogic Millar’s Farm (la ferme pédagogique des Meuniers) in
the Val-de-Marne area, next to Orly Airport, is close to this urban culture of self-
organization. Since 1995, it has become a social local centre of youth insertion and
listening, organized around work in collective workshops. A social and solidarity
economy self-managed company, supported by the VINCI Foundation, which has
800 members and 8 employees, educators and teachers and contractual relation-
ships with municipalities, appears as a place built by and for the inhabitants. In its
reference chart, it writes in the preamble: “The farm project was developed on the
basis of the observation that the social bond has been deteriorating, that is to say on
the capability of people to live together with respect for differences (age, colour,
belief, social status) in a framework of social and solidarity cohesion”. In Stains, in
Seine-Saint-Denis, north to Paris, the same process of resistance and self-
organization can be observed in the Farm of Possible (la ferme des Possibles). This
place of agricultural production, in an urban environment, has a vocation for social
integration of people in need (unemployed, in particular). It is an agroforestry farm
engaged in an organic farming approach that produces vegetables and fruits. It high-
lights the importance of cultivated biodiversity and the ancestral figure of peasantry.
Some people claim the agroecological and spiritual principles of the Colibris
movement founded by Pierre Rabhi, French theoretician of the “declining” of
“happy sobriety” and of the “insurrection of consciences”; others illustrate explic-
itly a social agriculture implied in social inclusion practices with a very variable
financial assistance of public services.
In all these new forms of resistance (or rather resilience), supported or not by
public administrations, common goods and values which have been privatized or
badly managed by neo-liberal practices are claimed: relationship to the land, social
solidarity and human dignity as much as water and soil qualities, for instance.
Private property is also questioned, and collective forms of social and spiritual life
are revived. Alternative methods of agricultural production are preferred within
communities and, more generally, a hope in the idealized virtues of life together
with vegetable and animal, wild and cultivated nature.
The idea of territorial common expressed by these resistance practices some-
times corresponds to a withdrawal into oneself, to a critical posture of today’s world
functioning and to a survival surge of the disappointed and the excluded of the city
and of life. In other cases, it is about real utopias (as food autonomy of urban areas),
considered as chimerical by some people (by the scientists for metropoles in par-
ticular) or realistic by international movements as Incredible Edible. In any case, it
is about hopes in better worlds initiated by producing food goods but, above all,
facilities paid by public services (social inclusion, sharing, pedagogy, biodiversity).
So many initiatives and innovations, alternative or not, that we will describe as agri-
urban matters, and that can be better understood through the notion of landscape.
156 P. Donadieu
2.4 Towards Territorial Landscape Governance
Perceiving a territory as a landscape, as an accessible fragment to the senses, imme-

diately brings the critical sense, aesthetic or not, which is given to it by the user. For
the same scenery, this sense is different according to the practices of the users who
remember different or similar characters. What “makes landscape” for some “does
not make it” for the others.7 Some resort to the genius of the place: “emotions that
we feel in front of some places, with the conviction that they are inhabited, animated
by a sort of aesthetic and mystical genius that would belong to them in their own
right” (Roger, Mouvance II, 2006, p. 52). Some others to a shared subjectivity
implying “for the landscape architect to accompany the passage of the individual
feeling towards collective acknowledgement of the sensitive characters of a place or
of a landscape” (Aubry, Mouvance II, op. cit., p. 95). But, most of the time, this col-
lective feeling derives from a socio-political construction that brings the users of a
space to a common comprehension of the meanings of places.
Let’s take an example. In Fig. 2’s landscape image (a fragment of the Angevines
Low Valleys, floodable, in the perimeter of Angers Metropole), the farmer breeder
holds of it essentially the meadows which allow him to patrol his herd and harvest
his hay; the poplar grower values the poplars of which he appraises the economic
profitability and expands it as much that he can; the ornithologist, the moor and the
bushes where corncrakes nest (Crex crex), locally protected bird species; and the
Fig. 2 Angevines Low Valleys (Metropole of Angers, France): a co-produced agriurban common.
Source Photo Pierre Donadieu
7
It is the same for the expression “Make territory” (Faire territoire), i.e. resolve together recog-
nized issues as common on a pertinent area” (Vial et Dhérissard, op. cit., p. 201).
wanderer living in Angers indicates the place where he regularly comes for a change
of scenery in the middle of the flowery meadows during summer time.
Not only does this territory have as much meaning as there are landscape inter-
pretations, but for the same places, distinct commons of landscapes are thus formed:
those of the poplar growers who support poplar monoculture; the breeders who wish
to expand their sources of hay threatened by the poplars’ extension; those of the
naturalists, botanists and ornithologists who are seeking to keep the meadows aban-
doned by the breeders thanks to public subsidies; and those of the strollers who
want to keep this vast space accessible, model of friendly nature for most of Angers
inhabitants. Tension is often latent between the users of these areas, and sometimes
conflict may break out if the uses become rivals.8 But it is the awareness of a respon-
sibility to share that engages the emergence of the common between the stakehold-
ers of the future of the landscapes of the place.
For this reason, since the 1990s, it has been possible to build the rules for the
pooling of commons specific to these users, after several years of discussions
between the elected representatives of Angers Metropole, the farmers, the land own-
ers and the technicians of breeding, nature protection, landscape and poplar farm-
ing. This is in order to share the territory to the best of the interests that are pooled
by all the stakeholders. This landscape governance of a common territory includes
the contradictory and convergent interests of the users in an agreement that goes
beyond them and of which each of them is the protector but takes part to its evolu-
tion. The community evolves: some leave and others stay and count new users.
If the common character to all the private soils of this valley is to be floodable
and not constructible, the sharing of their uses is part of the construction of a land-
scape and territorial common that does not leave itself be imposed by exclusive
poplars at the expense of any other economic use (cattle breeding), social (leisure
activities), environmental (biodiversity, natural risks) or landscaped (individual and
collective well-being). The common transcends individual interests in a given con-
text but, not being sacralised, remains fragile when interests or local context change.
3 The Construction of Agriurbanity
The key issue of mixed landscaped and territory approaches is to reconcile the rea-
sons for producing locally all or a part of the so-called eco-system-based services
planned by the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment (2005): provisioning, environ-
mental regulation, social and cultural services. The landscape and territorial scopes
8
What geographer Hervé Davodeau says by analysing the conflicts linked to the landscape in
Anjou: “We interpret the conflicts produced by landscape management as the revealers of the ter-
ritorialisation of a landscape project that, by changing dimension, must change content”. Des con-
flits révélateurs de la territorialisation du projet de paysage. Exemples from the Loire Valley. In
Territoires de conflits, analyses des mutations de l’occupation de l’espace. L’Harmattan,
pp.49–61/322, 2008. <Hal-00788157>
158 P. Donadieu
are of the same nature: to create shared relationships with the qualified places that
make the territories liveable according to the inhabitants and stakeholders’ tastes
and preferences and not only as per public administrations.
The landscaped approach (or rather landscape-based) favours perceived topo-
graphic forms, multi-sensoriality, perceptible singular characteristics, local memo-
ries, nature facts and in fine the multiple senses – and not only functional – of what
is perceived.
When it is designed by professional space planners, the project subscribes in
time and space in a multiscale way. There lies its desired coherence, if it is imple-
mented and respected (Donadieu 2014b, op. cit.).
Since the European Landscape Convention of 2000 (ELC) was signed, and
sometimes before (in France, particularly), the landscape territorial project rather
pursues purposes of aesthetic, societal and environmental satisfaction for the inhab-
itants, than those of strict aesthetic pleasures.
As a result, it managed to improve the urban and territory project without merg-
ing with him. The theoretical notion of landscape used by researchers is then
referred to that of social, political and cultural construction of landscapes or of
societal project of landscape (Donadieu 2016b). The challenge of choice of soil uses
then clearly appears, as the space landowners and users become the main needed
actors of the process of territorial landscape project. It is the notion of local indi-
vidual and collective responsibility that should then rule public decisions (Fig. 3).
The way in which land use is democratically decided therefore depends on how
territory and landscape projects are built and gathered together. These practices,
which generally call on the notion of landscape only in patrimonial or naturalist
perspectives, are very different according to the countries, from the most authoritar-
ian to the most democratic.
One of the major obstacles relates to the soil property right, even if it is not abso-
lute (with the usufruct in particular). Yet, as a result of the works of the American
E. Ostrom, it has become possible to consider the rational dissociation of the differ-
ent usage rights of a fund, from strict usage, contractual or not, until the right to
alienate (Orsi, on 2013).
3.1 Dissociate Land Use Rights
When Garrett Hardin writes its famous article of 1968: The Tragedy of Commons,
he is faced, as many researchers of that time, with the necessity to explain the deg-
radation of tropical soils. He takes over his own account the long-standing criticism,
by the agronomists and doctors, of common property, and he perpetuates, success-
fully, the idea that this land regime only brings misery to the societies that use it due
to the depletion of the fragile resources concerned.
The only alternative to this status, as in the case of the collective pasture in North
Africa, becomes private property that replaces the collectives, most of the time
through a sharing and a cultivation which consecrates this change in land status.
Fig. 3 Seine-Saint-Denis, Pierrefitte/Seine, north of Paris, agricultural soils, left by the market
gardener, will they be built for housing or converted into family gardens as requested by the inhab-
itants? (see Fig. 6). Source Photo Pierre Donadieu
Once they have become owners of their lands, the former collectives’ members are
in this way supposed to integrate into their private heritage the risks of destruction
of the good by uncontrollable users (the “stowaways” of Hardin), by producing
more and fertilizing the soils. Yet, as Fabienne Orsi points out (2013, p. 20), in
England as in France, the regime of land property community in the former regimes
“not only implied the lack of freedom to dispose of the thing (l’abusus) but autho-
rized the superposition (or juxtaposition) of various rights of property or usage of a
same thing”.
By decomposing property right into four types of right, Elinor Ostrom distin-
guished several types of users of a fund (Orsi 2013, 77 and ff.):
–– The authorised users who only hold access and collection rights, for instance, a
shepherd and its herd on a collective pasture or strollers in an agricultural area
open to the public
–– The usage and regulation right holders who add to the previous rights the autho-
rization to manage the good, for example, the delegate of the grazing collective
or the landscape manager (the animator) of an agriurban park
–– The owners of the good without the right to alienate (proprietors) who have all
the previous rights, for example, the fund tenants
160 P. Donadieu
–– The absolute owners, public or private, who have all the rights including to sell
Inspired by the governance of natural resources, this plural definition of “at sev-
eral” ownership allows to imagine forms of common agricultural soil ownership
whose multiple usages are the main issue, for instance, the right for strollers to
access to public and private rural pathways and for the animators of agriurban proj-
ects to negotiate this access with the owners and the farmers.9
3.2 ome Cases of Agriurbanity in the Greater Paris

S
Metropolitan Area and Elsewhere
In a loop of the Seine, at the extremity of the axis of the Défense area to the west of
Paris, the market plain of Montesson gathers on 400 hectares 17 market gardeners
who produce half of the salads consumed in the region of Paris. This plain was long
promised to urbanization, but social resistance has been organized there with the
help of legal tools of protection of agricultural soils. The Region Ile-de-France
(Land Agency of the Green Areas, Agence foncière des Espaces verts) and the
department of Yvelines (Sensitive Natural Areas, Espaces Naturels Sensibles)
bought more than 60 hectares of lands in order to re-rent them to the farmers. But a
project of detour road threatens! The stakeholders (elected representatives, farmers,
owners, associations) then created the Plain of Future organization in 2012. The
Territorial Coherence Scheme (SCOT, inter-communal urban plan) has approved its
agriurban project. Indeed, a pluri-territorial agriurban governance (from the munici-
pality to the state), whose origin dates to the early 2000s, was installed (Fig. 4). For
one year, a collective ZAD Patate is planting potatoes along the roadways to sup-
port the defence of the plain and protect religious mantises that live there (Lagneau
and al., op. cit., pp. 91–93).
The same processes of landscape and territorial governance have been developed
with success on the Saclay plateau since the end of the 1990s (2400 hectares, 12
farmers, the multi-actors organization “Terre et Cité” in the south of Versailles; in
the west of Versailles, with the patrimonial association of the Versailles plain and
the Alluets plateau (25 municipalities, 10,000 hectares), since 2003, which set up an
inter-community landscape charter.
Outside Paris region, many opportunities are thus seized by the socio-political
collectives to stabilize agricultural activities and, in some cases, to establish young
farmers. It is the case in Lille (Wavrin project, 47 hectares, 10 farmers not accom-
modated on site), on the former military base of Brétigny (50 hectares of project
market gardening in organic agriculture) in the south of Paris, in Mouans-Sartoux
(Maritime-Alps), to create a municipal farm dedicated to school catering or in order
to favour, with municipalities, the set-up of community gardens and of (micro)urban
9
These practices are easier to install in countries of jurisprudential law (e.g. the common law in the
United Kingdom) than in the countries of codified law (France).
Fig. 4 Plaine d’Avenir: the Montesson plain (West Paris, France). Source Photo Pierre Donadieu
farm experimentations. It is also the case of the Ville comestible initiatives,10 Ville
résiliente, Ville fertile, Ville végétale, Ville nature, Incroyables Comestibles
(Incredible Edible)11… : municipalities or collective militants of urban agriculture
in Nantes, Arcueil, Bordeaux, Paris, Albi, Rennes, Montesson etc.
In all these cases, social, economic, ethical and spiritual values are shared sepa-
rately. According to the concerned collectives, identifiable on social networks, their
mobilization contributes to mitigate the perceived negative effects of globalization,
metropolization and of the unregulated or poorly regulated urbanization. These val-
ues concern economic profitability, land stability of urban agriculture farms, pro-
ducer and consumer proximity and the high- or low-tech techniques of innovating
start-ups.12 In addition to this, especially in the world of militancy and resistance,
solidarity with the most deprived can be added to the list, as well as the responsibil-
ity of individual commitment, self-care, sanitary and gustatory quality of the
10
They often highlight the systematic principles of permotherapy and permaculture: “which
enables to see the city as a global eco-system, in which the overall elements interact with each
other, are self-regulated and productive”. Permaculture was theorized in 1970 by the Australians
Bill Morisson and David Holmgrem critiques of industrial agriculture. https://villepermaculturelle.
wordpress.com/objet/.
11
Since the founding initiative of the English city of Todmorden in 2008, this international move-
ment of urban agriculture, based on permotherapy, makes available for free all the vegetables cul-
tivated in the public area. It is looking for towns and villages’ food autonomy and encourages
consumers to look for food supply in the vicinity of urban areas. 80 towns and villages (including
Rennes and Albi) have joined this movement in France.
12
We will admit the distinction between cultures outside low-tech ground (the vegetable and
orchard garden of the Pullman Hotel in Paris by the Topager company) and high-tech (hydro, aqua
and aeroponic) medium to high financial investment.
162 P. Donadieu
agri-food products (“organic” products) and the construction of social links and
pooled interests between stakeholders of the territorial governances. A vibratory
motion of converging and conflicting ideas, realistic and utopian, has spread all over
the planet through the social networks.13
4 Prospects for the Agriurban Commons
4.1 The Three Commons
The previous overview of agriurban practices shows that there are three main ways
to make common, to combine pooling interests. The first one registers in the mer-
chant exchange between an agricultural producer and a food goods consumer aim-
ing for economic models of profitability. The second regards the agriurban factory
and the way for the city dwellers to make society in an environment ruled by the
urban politics. And the last one, consequence of the first two, tries to resist or adapt
to the dysfunctions that they generate by inventing new self-produced life
environments.
4.1.1 Commons of Economic Interest
To talk about economic commons is like talking about markets, about the exchange
area where the interest of the parties, the seller and the buyer, is to agree on a fair
price. Most agricultural companies located in urban areas are part of a market,
where the stakeholders (producers, {re-} sellers, consumers) are either relatively
close to one another (vegetable and fruit sales on urban markets or in short circuits),
distant (European markets) or very distant (globalized meat, wine, cereals and pro-
teaginous markets).
Some companies achieve their whole turnover in close urban proximity, but for
most of them, customers are both close and (very) distant from the places of produc-
tion. Merchant communities, which are economic interest communities, export in
the regulatory national or supranational framework (international commercial
agreements).
The Luffa Farm, created in 2010 in Montreal, falls into this category – 2880 sq.
on top of the roof of a commercial building in hydroponic market gardening – and
is distributed in short circuits. This is also the case of most of the fields, market and
floral greenhouses of agriculture companies, which have been long established in
See three recent works: Collectif, Agriculture urbaine: aménager et nourrir la ville, Vertigo,
13
Montréal, 2013, 388 p.; Guiomar X. (edit...) Dossier agricultures urbaines, Revue POUR, 2015,
415 p.; and Agriculture urbaine, vers une réconciliation ville nature, Natureparif, le Passager
Clandestin edition, 2015.
the urban network of most of the cities of the planet and supply closer and distant
markets.
Except for technical and economic prowess, as the Luffa Farm in France or as the
urban farms’ pioneers of Gally and Viltain in the west of Paris, this economic world
occupies a modest position in the recent publications on urban agriculture, a weak-
ness that can be explained by the alternative agriurban solutions that are proposed.
In fact, many of them are part of the declining economic model born in the 1970s,
following Denis Meadows’ report (The Limits of growth, 1972). This very critical
sensitivity of capitalism and productivism, agricultural in particular, has been
embodied in many national and international publications which inspire most of
“urbifarmers”.
However, entrepreneurial commons that are visible through agricultural profes-
sional organizations, land agencies and technical institutes are very different from
societal commons of allotment, shared and community gardens. The first ones are
essentially motivated by market conquests, the protection of agricultural profes-
sions and biotechnological innovation that provides competitive benefits, which is
not the case of the second ones that mainly provide social, educational, patrimonial
and spiritual services and create urban communities in form of alternative and mili-
tant social networks. In practice, in the ethical framework of social and solidarity
economy, they produce a part of the urban positive externalities of the economy that
intensive specialized production, the merchandizing of world and the modernist
conception of the city have made disappear without enough compensation.
4.1.2 Commons of Urbanistic Interest
Urban agriculture social trend, attached to food crops and to the land, finds an atten-
tive echo in the alternative urban thought that the philosopher “of the urban”
T. Paquot (Les faiseurs de ville, 2010) has made known to the francophone public.
We can include, for example, some historical figures as botanist, pedagogue and
theoretician of the city, English Patrick Geddes (1854–1932), who makes reference
for the bio-regionalists (Magnaghi 2012, 2014). Nowadays, the current rules of the
urban factory generally do not favour the welcoming and persistence of agriculture.
The French code of urbanism appears to be too rigid to easily welcome the multiple
agriurban initiatives, market and non-market. Indeed, by giving the choice to the
elected representatives to classify agricultural lands in A (agricultural and produc-
tive), N (natural) or U (urban, real or potential), it makes way for regrettable ambi-
guities in local urban plans often too restrictive. The N zoning supposes so much
naturalistic qualities (heritage) as landscape ones (cultural, aesthetical and func-
tional for eco-systemic services), and zoning U is sometimes given to shared garden
areas and educational farms. In all three, agricultural or social entrepreneurship
activities are not facilitated in the long run as municipal objectives of accommoda-
tion, transport or nature preservation can put them into question (Chalot 2015),
while agriurban projects could combine all these objectives if individual or collec-
tive mentalities and interests did not separate them.
164 P. Donadieu
Fig. 5 Raspberry cultivation for pick on your own, indoor, Gally farms, Versailles. Economic and
urbanistic commons. Source Photo Pierre Donadieu
But sometimes urban communities, owners of the land, invest in a real (sub)
urban agriculture open to the city dwellers. In 2010, the municipality of Toulouse
chose to preserve 240 hectares and to drive them in majority and under direct con-
trol in organic agriculture (cereals, soya, lentils, apiaries, viticulture) by giving
access to the public for leisure activities. It is the same in Montpellier (Mas-Nouguier
wine agriparc). In most cases where progress is being observed, urban agricultural
commons require the meeting of all stakeholders: elected representatives, inhabit-
ants, associations, future farmers, ecologists, town planners, landscape designers,
etc. That is how the 100-hectare Noisiel park, in the conurbation of Val-Maubuée in
the east of Paris, is now managed, thanks to a cattle farm providing economic value
to public areas. In 2014, the “le Vivant et la Ville” cluster, the Institut national de la
recherche agronomique (National Institute for Agronomic Research) and the
AgroParistech enable to set up an experiment, near Versailles, with the Gally farms
specialized in the production of vegetables aboveground under shelter, in circular
economy (Fig. 5).
In almost all these cases, the commercial purpose of these projects is achieved
through alliances between public institutions and private project owners and then in
trade commons of public and private roots. Indeed, it contributes to build agriurban
areas. They can take very different shapes: urban stockbreeding in large housing
complexes (the Clinamen company in Courneuve, north of Paris), permaculture
production tubs (Incroyables Comestibles), protection perimeters of former subur-
ban rural areas opened to the public (agricultural parks in practice) or low- or high-
tech experiments in and close urban conurbations.
This type of agriurbanism can limit to supply the neighbourhood. It can also give
city dwellers a pedestrian or cycling access to the suburban rural landscapes and to
the farms. These practices can be observed elsewhere, in Italy, for instance, in the
large agricultural park in the south of Milan. So that de facto sketches of agri-
neighbourhoods are born – future ephemeral communities or stable ones of a new
kind – whose population density remains very variable along a gradient from the
centre to urban periphery.
Still, another trend, very distant from the pooling process, regards green urban-
ism, whose decorative, environmental and sometimes food-related purposes are
showed in many Parisian architects’ projects. The responses to The Call for Urban
Innovative Projects of the city of Paris (Pavillon de l’Arsenal publishing editions),
in 2016, are the testimony of it.
In practice, this green and/or horticultural urbanism draws the attention of many
urban elected representatives. It can create, to the advantage of the city, communi-
ties of public and private interest, thanks to a territorial governance. But the latter is
not yet codified, if the agriculture/city hybridization forms are not stabilized. Urban
gardenings have a symbolic economic place there, due to the relative weakness of
their trade agricultural activity.
They have been generated over the past 20 years by a context of recurring urban
and societal crisis, whose most significant effects are unemployment, environmental
and food risks and the questioning of the societal consequences of neo-liberalism
and metropolization.
4.1.3 Commons of Social Interest
In the perimeter of an urban region, the numerous areas of private and public gar-
dening are a part of the urban factory, as well as the gardener/“urbifarmer” com-
munities.14 The conditions of their emergence (historical tradition and questioning
of the trade world and of regulatory urban planning) sometimes turn them into
counter powers of the city production dominant modes.
Here too a categorization is useful. On one hand, you can find private gardens,
around the pavilions, in the gardens of buildings, on balconies and terraces, which
belong to a family or co-proprietary common. On the other hand, you can find
labourer and allotment gardens, which have flourished in central and western
Europe for more than a hundred and fifty years: more than 60,000 in Berlin and
approximately 240,000 in the Netherlands today. And more recently, the community
gardens (collective or of social integration) appeared in North America at the end of
the last century. They extended to the whole world where people in precarious situ-
ation (unemployed, refugees, sick and convalescent, isolated and homeless people,
migrants, etc.) could meet help and solidarity.
The urbifarmer is a neologism used by the Guide of Urbifarmers (Guide des urbiculteurs,
14
Natureparif, May 2016).

166 P. Donadieu
Fig. 6 Allotments gardens, Saint Denis, north of Paris. Social and urbanistic commons. Source
Photo Pierre Donadieu
In France, the Cocagne gardens (organic vegetable farming with baskets) are a
well-known example. Can be added to the list the food crisis gardens, national or
local as in Cuba, the shared gardens (jardins partagés) by those who, as in Paris
with the Green Hand (Main verte) charter, or through the regional collective Graine
de Jardins (Garden seed), wish to gather together in order to cultivate abandoned
places of all types, public and private. There they can find conviviality and the shar-
ing of a citizen consciousness (Lagneau, op. cit., pp. 45–51) (Fig. 6).
The construction of commons around a cultivated place (or of breeding) and the
sharing of alternative ideas (decreasing or of solidarity in particular) is clear in the
community gardens that have taken place in urban wastelands. However, the limit
with the shared gardens is not always clear, depending on the people who make use
of it (neighbourhood inhabitants or homeless people!). The pooling of a place,
which can “make territory”, often hides social exclusions.
Finally, urban public parks and gardens, inherited from history, or recent, repre-
sent public authorities’ responses for the provision to urban dwellers of what are
now called ecosystemic services (environmental regulation, leisure and sport ser-
vices, pedagogy, spiritual, aesthetic and aesthesic). Yet, they are not sufficient for
the social categories that create commons of social interest. So, it is not uncommon
that public parks welcome associative vegetable gardens. As in the case of the three
categories of commons: economic, urban, and social, which are aimed, for example,
to hybridize in Montreuil’s site of “Murs-à-pêches” in the east of Paris.
4.2 Which Philosophical Support?
If we think that neither utilitarian or Kantian approaches nor libertarian principles

provide enough lighting on the choices to be made, can we rely on pragmatic
philosophy?
Is there a fourth way that would allow agriculture and urban gardening stake-
holders not to care about the merits caused by their decisions and actions? And that
would draw attention to the practical consequences of their actions only and lean on
democratic debate to decide what is desirable to do or not?
Following psychologist William James, the American philosopher and peda-
gogue John Dewey (1859–1952) imagined a method (the survey and the mobiliza-
tion of the “public”) to facilitate the human adaptations to the evolution of societies
and of their economic and political context. Dewey’s pragmatic approach wanted
thus to promote, in The Public and its problems (1927), self-realization through the
participation of the individual to collective action.15
If we mobilize this moral and political philosophy, little known in Europe, to
shed light on the problems raised by the presence or the project of agricultural
activities in the city, the field of territorial agriurban governance practices already
mentioned opens. It means that each agriurban case has its own problems and solu-
tions related to the stakeholders involved. Entrepreneurial farmers and militant urbi-
farmers, the State and local authorities or associations hold a part of the problem
and the solution. It is within the framework of goods and services thus jointly con-
structed that the stakeholders find their freedom of action and thought. These com-
mons continue afterwards to adapt to new situations within the framework of a
deliberative or participative democracy.
However, pragmatism is not the panacea, otherwise as a method of resolution of
territorialized issues, since it is at the origin of social-liberalism (American and
English mainly) as part of the market economy. So, applied to this field, it does not
guarantee fair wealth redistribution. Let us rather retain from pragmatism the meth-
ods and not the ideologies derived from it. This method can be experimented in
every territory, with success, by the way, as we have shown, but without mentioning
its philosophical origins, which is not incompatible with the shared choice of moral
cardinal values like justice, freedom, dignity and responsibility (Nussbaum,
on 2011).
The use of pragmatism from J. Dewey is developed in P. Donadieu, Paysages en commun, pour
15
une éthique des mondes vécus, Presses universitaires de Valenciennes, 2014.

168 P. Donadieu
5 Conclusion
Commons are pooled socio-political constructions of goods and services. The notion
of agriurban common allows to highlight and to account for very different forms of
resistance and adaptation of urban societies to the loss or inadequacy of agricultural
activities in metropolitan areas.
It favours the idea of the building of territories and agriurban landscapes thanks
to the territorial and landscape governance tool. Its purpose is not only to preserve
the farmland and farmers but also to focus on the democratic expression of the col-
lective choices of the stakeholders, and of the public, associative and private parts.
Processes result in social and sometimes political organizations of the communities
of three types: (1) autonomous, alternative and often libertarians; (2) associated to
political, economic and institutional local authorities, national or international, and
(3) hybrid between these two poles.
The idea of agriurban common expresses the societal consequences of the mul-
tifunctionality which is assigned to agriculture (by the Agricultural Orientation Law
of 1999 in France in particular). When (intra)urban agriculture initiatives do not
lean on robust economic models, the services that they provide to city dwellers
(social insertion, pedagogy, biodiversity, etc.) can be remunerated by public ser-
vices and by the concerned cities in particular. Thus, communities of interest emerge
which can become communities of destiny.
This idea allows above all to understand how a collective government of natural
resources (soil and water mostly) and of their food usage is possible when urban
political representation seeks alternatives to real estate market pressures; when
legal, agronomic, urbanistic or landscape skills struggle to associate because they
have been split up by the professional trainings and practices; and when local social
forces, especially agricultural, become aware of their political power, not by confin-
ing thought and action within the limits of the local but by relying critically on the
imaginary inspired by the landscapes created within the framework of the globaliza-
tion of exchanges and networks, not by claiming additional rights from the State but
by building, beyond public and private property, the local rules that will manage in
a responsible way the goods and services common to the users of a territory (Calame
and Ziaka, on 2015).
Producing the rules of agriurbanism16 and of its many forms of territorial adapta-
tion still remains an embryonic project. However, it is enriched every day by the
common experience of the elected representatives, town planners, urban farmers,
militants and agriurban project managers. These agriurban commons testify that
one part of the citizens has the ability and wish to live with the agricultural world
(and not just anyone), and they can therefore only be ruled through the pooling of
interests acknowledged by the audiences of the urban factory. This practice, which
16
Which may be defined as the art, science and technique of the urban factory with the farmers and
gardeners, for and with the proximity inhabitants. See Robin Chalot’s article, Inventer un nouvel
urbanisme en cultivant la ville, in Agriculture urbaine, op. cit., 2015, pp. 103–137.
is now inscribed in the duration, will experience successes and failures. It will
request a long time to stabilize, characteristic inherent to territorial governance pro-
cesses and to the evolution of mentalities and urban cultures.
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Urban–Rural Relations as Assemblages:
A Conceptual Framework for Urban Food
Policies
Gianluca Brunori and Paolo Prosperi
1 Introduction
In the twentieth century, the vision of rural development has been influenced by a
modernization approach, which has seen the past in the countryside and in the city
the future. The countryside, with this approach, has been perceived as territory wait-
ing for urbanization, and rural development has been conceived of as application of
urban models to rural areas.
This model has been strongly contested at the end of the 1970s, when endoge-
nous development approaches have started to consolidate. They have focused their
attention on the need for rural actors and communities to gain autonomy – first of
all cultural – and to look for development models and trajectories based on distinc-
tive characteristics of the rural territory.
The endogenous development approach has inspired the initial LEADER pro-
grams in Europe, and in many cases, it has been turned into strategies of relative
‘distantiation’ of rural areas and their economic activities from urban markets and
technologies (Van der Ploeg 1994). Examples of endogenous rural developments
have been found in the revitalization of remote rural areas based on back-to-land
movements looking for alternative lifestyles. Soon, however, it has been recognized
that strategies based on isolation could bring to ‘green traps’, situations where avail-
able resources would not be sufficient to achieve a minimum of social welfare
(Cumming et al. 2014). Rural areas, in fact, don’t escape from the logic of the
‘space of flows’ and its tendency to destructure the homogeneity and the identity of
places (Castells 2011); the reconstruction of local identities embedded in space, the
new ‘spaces of places’, is now to be understood as the outcome of relational strate-
gies aimed at locally regulating the speed, and the patterns, of global flows.
G. Brunori (*) · P. Prosperi

Department of Agrarian, Food and Agro-environmental Sciences, University of Pisa,
Pisa, Italy
e-mail: gianluca.brunori@unipi.it; paolo.prosperi@unipi.it

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_10
172 G. Brunori and P. Prosperi
Endogenous approaches have thus evolved into neo-endogenous approaches

(Lowe et al. 1995; Ray 1999) that focus on the capacity of rural areas to better posi-
tion themselves in the globalized networks through the mobilization of local
resources and local identities. In the strategies based on neo-endogenous approaches,
local identities are shaped by the interplay with global trends, and their construction
is moved by the need to build differences that embody into products and services
demanded by global consumers (Ray 1999).
After the 2007–2008 crisis, things have changed. On one hand, the recession and
the retrenchment of the public sector have put into evidence the dependency of rural
areas from public spending and from incomes earned from outside the rural areas.
Processes of abandonment, especially in the most remote areas, have thus intensi-
fied (Verburg et al. 2010). On the other hand, the crisis has hit strongly the trust in
urban models. Mass unemployment has created a disillusion on the capacity of
urban models to respond to social expectations and stimulated a new ‘back to land’
movement (Kasimis and Zografakis 2014). Facing new sustainability issues such as
climate change, mass migration and resource scarcity, the question is to what extent
will cities be able to cope and to anticipate future catastrophes.
It is now clear that the way out of the economic and social crisis cannot be found
without a careful study of urban–rural links. An improved understanding of those
interconnections would also contribute to build the pathway towards sustainability.
Urban administrations are increasingly aware that life of cities depends strongly on
the countryside as well as life of rural areas depends on cities. This new awareness
implies a deep revision of the paradigms that so far have guided city administra-
tions. Strategies to build resilient cities will have to envisage a transition to new and
more sustainable lifestyles, production models, regulatory patterns and governance
arrangements, considering explicitly rural areas as components of the urban life.
The present paper develops a reflection on the governance principles, regulating the
urban–rural links, that are necessary to address new sustainability challenges.
2 Transition as a Cognitive Process
The transition towards sustainability requires a deep change in the way people know
and live the city. This change, in open and free societies, will require the construc-
tion of new visions and, even more important, new representations of the city.
Shared visions and representations are necessary to coordination of independent
actors (Gharajedaghi 2011). Making top-down visions accepted implies a vertical
distribution of power and a hierarchical structure of cities, which rarely occur. In
open, multipolar, complex societies, the only way to generate shared visions and
representations is participation.
Shared visions (images of how a socio-technical system should be) and represen-
tations (images of how a socio-technical system is) can be considered as ‘operating
systems’ of socio-technical systems, cognitive meta-rules that enable and constrain
daily practices (Gharajedaghi 2011). Shared representations are stabilizers of a
Urban–Rural Relations as Assemblages: A Conceptual Framework for Urban Food… 173
Fig. 1 Processes of
deliberation and role of
knowledge (Source:
Adapted from Revi et al.
(2014, p. 576)
society, but at the same time, they may be factors of resistance to change. Changing
practices entails changing shared images. This is not an easy task, as a change of
shared representations needs challenging strong assumptions embodied into cogni-
tive and normative dimensions.
In a complex society, there are competing visions and representations, and each
of them generates sets of practices. But if people don’t live in separate realities, then
visions and representations overlap to a certain extent. The challenge of transition
to sustainability is to build upon these overlapping spaces. Deliberation, which is
communication aimed at establishing common meanings in view of decisions, is the
key to this process. In its 2014 climate change report (Revi et al. 2014), IPCC
addresses this issue, highlighting how deliberation is affected by knowledge use,
production and filtering.1 In an information society, all are knowledge producers,
users or filters, but some actors have more resources than others in performing them.
Knowledge production is based on data collection and analysis. Knowledge use is
related to decision-making and to communication. Knowledge filtering is about
emphasis, priorities and translation. All actors are at the same time knowledge fil-
ters, producers and users, and shared images emerge when their knowledge is
shared, questioned and improved through deliberation. Figure 1 illustrates the con-
text wherein deliberation occurs. A new shared image (knowledge production) may
be inspired by problems emerging in real life (knowledge use) by individuals or
groups, communicated through the media (knowledge filters), embodied by other
individuals and groups into their own images (knowledge production).
Knowledge use is at the basis of practices, as these are composed of meanings,
skills and things (Shove et al. 2012). New knowledge can bring to modification of
practices, and likewise novelties emerging from daily practices can contribute to
new knowledge creation. The challenge of deliberative democracy is to open spaces
where deliberation on issues of public interest is encouraged and the range of issues
subject of deliberation is enlarged.
1
In the IPCC report, knowledge users are named knowledge actors.
3 Metaphors for New System Representations
According to the above scheme, production of knowledge can bring to shared

visions through processes of deliberation supported by knowledge filtering and
knowledge use. Our contribution here aims to propose three metaphors that may
improve understanding the complexity of urban–rural relationships when consider-
ing urban food systems.
The first metaphor we propose is ‘metabolism’. With this, we look at cities as
(socio-technical) systems whose life is based on circulation of resources that enter
in the city (food, water, energy, materials), which are transformed into goods and
services and produce leftovers that get out of the city as waste (Swyngedouw et al.
2006). As in living organisms, malfunctioning circulation may alter the functioning
of the system. Socio-technical systems regulate these flows, and regulation and its
outcomes are affected by power distribution, conflicts and cooperation between
actors. The metaphor of metabolism is particularly useful to raise awareness about
the limits to growth and the vulnerability of cities, as it makes visible the depen-
dency of cities from a regular flow of resources coming from the outside, namely,
from rural areas, and a correspondent outflow of waste to the outside. The metabo-
lism metaphor also highlights the relevance of speed. A regular flow of resources
entails an appropriate timing, adding the time dimension to the coordination among
system elements and processes. A slow decision-making may alter the metabolism
and make a crisis emerge. Moreover, given the same rate of consumption of inputs
per unit of output, the concept of metabolism implies that the faster the processes of
transformation, the higher the pressure on resources, as in a given unit of time more
cycles of the same process can be performed. Strategies for slowing down the urban
metabolism could, therefore, reduce the pressure on resources.
The second metaphor is ‘circular economy’ (Stahel 2016). Circular economy –
which is “restorative and regenerative” (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2015) and
aims to keep and re-create the highest value of products for as long as possible,
eliminating waste (European Commission 2015) – is generally opposed to the ‘lin-
ear economy’. In a linear economy, in fact, exchange values don’t embody the social
costs of production, for example, pollution and resource depletion (Andersen 2007).
Costs of waste management are only partially embodied into prices of the com-
modities, as a relevant part of waste management – as well as its costs – burdens on
the shoulders of public administrations and citizens. As producers pay only a frac-
tion of waste management, there is no incentive to reusing or recycling leftovers,
unless the price of leftovers is higher than the costs of waste management. As a
consequence, in a linear economy, there is not much distinction between leftovers
and waste.
In a circular economy, waste tends to zero (Ellen MacArthur Foundation 2014).
As producers and consumers pay the full cost (including social cost) of commodi-
ties, production processes are designed and organized in space so to make leftovers
become inputs for other processes. A circular economy needs a systemic, rather
than an analytical, approach. Whereas the linear economy is represented of a sum of
individual activities, the circular economy is based on interdependence between

production processes and active search for matching between leftovers’ demand and
supply. Unlike the linear economy, matching between demand and supply is not
only based on exchange value but mainly on use value discovered through exchange
of information about the physical, chemical and biological nature of the leftovers
and through active research to exploit potential use. The rule of cascading (Ellen
MacArthur Foundation 2014), a pillar of the circular economy, implies a ranking of
value of successive uses of materials from the highest to the lowest value, so that,
for example, before turning matter into energy – which has the lowest value per
unit – a series of other transformation should be performed. Moreover, a circular
economy implies a design of spatial proximities between producers so to minimize
the logistic costs of leftover management.
The third metaphor is ‘assemblage’. As known, the concept was proposed in the
1970s by the French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari and successively used by
social scientists to make sense of the diversity and complexity of processes occur-
ring into a society (De Landa 2016). In a city, people meet, talk, do things in com-
mon, fight, make projects, break out relations and transform their physical
environment. Buildings, open spaces, infrastructures and technologies affect the
way people interact and the way they operate on the environment (Moragues-Faus
and Sonnino 2018). Assemblages are thus socio-technical entities, involving both
human and non-human actors. The parts of an assemblage contribute to perform
functions they were not necessarily designed to perform: a screwdriver is designed
to screw, but it can be used as a weapon or as component of an artistic piece
(Gharajedaghi 2011). In assemblages, order emerges through adaptation and learn-
ing rather than by design. In a city, power is distributed, so that any change needs to
be carried out by coalitions of actors each of them having different visions and
representations. Assemblages provide a metaphor to represent emerging order from
interaction between independent elements and the contingency of this order.
The assemblage metaphor is useful both as a heuristic tool and as a strategic tool.
As a heuristic tool, it helps to understand the drivers of urban change, the evolution
of urban processes, the structures of power and the barriers to change. As a strategic
tool, the metaphor of assemblage helps to identify forces that can be enrolled in
processes of change and to design governance patterns (McCann et al. 2013). For
example, it addresses the issue of establishing links between different policy, social,
economic and administrative networks in the design of policies for multidimen-
sional problems. It also tells us something about the long and complex processes of
building shared goals between components with different interests.
4 New Representations for New Urban–Rural Relations
The above-described metaphors are particularly fit to the understanding of urban–

rural relations towards transition to sustainability. With the development of trade,
cities have emancipated from the constraints posed by the neighbouring
countryside, becoming attractors of flows of material and symbolic resources from

distant places (Woods 2009). Contemporary cities, if we abstract from their admin-
istrative boundaries, may be seen as urban–rural assemblages, wherein specific
activities of rural areas, independently where they are located, are functionally
linked to parts of the urban metabolism. For example, the present levels of European
meat and dairy consumption could not be possible without the flows of soybeans,
coming from Brazil or Argentina, feeding intensive livestock farms, nor the fresh
fruit consumption patterns of the Londoners could be conceived without Spanish or
African supply. These commercial patterns have become so consolidated that it
could hardly be thought that an unexpected disruption of one part would leave other
parts unaffected. For instance, after the garbage crisis in the city of Naples (Italy) in
the early 2000s, the city administration signed an agreement with garbage incinera-
tors in the North Europe to reduce the pressure on local landfills. It would not be
possible to understand the management of the city of Naples without considering
the existence of these plants.
With the emancipation from their neighbouring countryside, cities have lost a
feedback function, signalling scarcity and depletion of resources. In an increasingly
volatile environment, resource scarcity and depletion add up to instability of condi-
tions for regular trade, to climate change and to backfires of the weakening of neigh-
bouring rural areas, to make cities deeply vulnerable and unsustainable. As
Cumming et al. (2014) suggest, these pathways bring to ‘red traps’.
Transition to sustainability, according with the bioregional paradigm, should be
imagined as a local/regional multi-scale process of disassembling and reassembling
people, processes, relations and spaces. In an increasing volatile environment, a
stronger connection to local resources, that is, a partial relocalization, is key to a risk
management strategy, trading short-term advantages for long-term security (Thayer
2003). This would imply a progressive reconfiguration – based on the principle of
local preference and circular economy – of socio-technical systems built around
food, waste, water and energy.
This process of relocalization, however, could be thought – at least partially – as
a return to self-sufficient, isolated spaces. In fact, a degree of independence of both
rural and urban areas will be unavoidable and even desirable, as each of them will
continue to look for opportunities linked to global networks and to keep a sufficient
level of freedom and autonomy. Relocalization, then, needs to be based on eco-
nomic, aesthetic and ethical appeal and requires negotiation among a variety
of actors.
Adopting the metaphors of assemblages, metabolism and circular economy
implies an approach to governance much different from past experiences. It implies
integrating market regulation with social and technical rules. It gives public admin-
istrations and civil society a much greater say on market mechanisms, involving a
diversity of actors, visions and representations in a common appraisal effort based
on deliberation.
5 Building Sustainable Urban-Bioregional Food Systems
Food is an important component of urban metabolism. Every day people need food
for their basic survival; for all people to be fed, production, processing, distribution
and waste disposal processes are needed. The way these activities are organized, the
available infrastructures and the rules that regulate the activities that affect the food
and nutrition security of different groups contribute to the general welfare and to
environmental health. Likewise, the way people behave can affect the way activities
are organized in space and in time. The challenge of the transition to sustainable
food systems is thus developing shared representations of the food system that
affects daily people’s practices.
Linear approaches represent food systems as mono-functional, as they generated
only a limited set of outcomes, for example, stressing on the goal of food availabil-
ity may imply a focus on production and producers and, therefore, an understate-
ment of the role of social inequalities. Linear approaches cannot address the
multidimensionality of food (Allen and Prosperi 2016) and the multiplicity of food
system outcomes, such as health, environment and social outcomes. A system
approach, on the contrary, postulates that actors and activities can generate a multi-
plicity of outcomes, not seldom implying trade-offs, dilemmas and unintended con-
sequences, and that each outcome can be performed by a multiplicity of actors and
activities. Updating the representation of food systems is thus a priority for transi-
tion also at a bioregional level.
For local food systems to be sustainable, an updated approach to food policies
would then endeavour to answer questions like: what are the outcomes expected
from a food system? What trade-offs may occur? What are the unexpected conse-
quences of food system activities? Which are relevant actors and activities in pro-
ducing sustainability and food security outcomes? How to regulate actors and
activities so to have better outcomes? How to improve practices? How to overcome
barriers to the achievement of better outcomes? How to trigger and develop self-
reliant, fair and safe local food systems? The following scheme (Fig. 2) frames the
transition strategies to food system sustainability.
Fig. 2 Framework of
deliberation-driven
transition strategies
towards food system
sustainability. (Source:
Authors’ elaboration)
The scheme links the process of framing daily practices with governance of
knowledge. Transition strategies should be able to change actors’ practices through
a democratic process centred upon deliberation. The challenge is to enlarge the area
of issues being problematized through public deliberation and to guarantee delib-
eration mechanisms safe from manipulation. In the case of food, we assist to a
growth in the number of issues that are discussed in the public sphere and submitted
to ethical problematization, and problematization is a first step towards a change of
frames and new rules for choice. For example, in Italy, the problematization of the
origin of food has created a strong pressure to a relocalization of food consumption
and production. As consumers increasingly ask to know the origin of the food they
choose, producers reorganize the value chain in order to promote national or local
products.
Food system representations – of the actors and their relations, their activities
and their outcomes –frame the meanings people give to their food practices. New
meanings for food, for example, in relation to environmental, health or social issues,
encourage people to develop new skills and to embody new sets of things into their
practices. The campaign on food waste, which started from grassroots initiatives
and upscaled to national and international level, has helped people problematize
their daily practices (Tucker and Farrelly 2016). However, it is to be recognized that
top-down campaigns, aimed at imposing top-down representations, are not neces-
sarily successful. System representations are filtered to consumers through their
food environment, which determines the set of material, symbolic and relational
conditions that affect consumers’ choice. In a given food environment, people can
have access to food through direct entitlements (self-production), indirect entitle-
ments (income to buy food) and transfer entitlements (food provided through social
networks or through state subsidies) (Brunori et al. 2013). People can have easy
access to a larger or a narrower range of food items, depending on distance, mobility
and income. The combination of these entitlements depends both on subjective con-
ditions of people and to their food environment. Everybody has needs and prefer-
ences in relation to food, but needs and preferences are enabled, and constrained, by
everyday life patterns (e.g. workplace, social life, house life) on one side and by
systems of food provision on the other side. Blaming the consumers for wrong food
practices may not be as successful as a thorough and shared understanding of the
food environments that influence them (Evans 2011).
In the scheme above illustrated (Fig. 2), food choice embodied in food practices
is a driver of system change. Decreased or increased demand can send signals to
market actors to adjust the supply. New knowledge at consumers’ level can be
shared to peers and generate system innovation. Changes in shopping patterns stim-
ulate changes in the distribution system, a component of the food environment.
A system representation linking food system, food environments and food prac-
tice gives public administrations and civil society an important room for manoeuvre
that links, integrates and readjusts market forces in the creation of food environ-
ments conducive of appropriate food behaviour. Public administrations can affect
people’s entitlement to food by regulating access to urban gardens, by organizing
public procurement, by promoting healthy dietary guidelines and by regulating food
distribution. Circular economy patterns can be created through education, incen-

tives and penalties and infrastructures (Suárez-Eiroa et al. 2019). As most of these
matters are normally regulated by different bodies, appropriate governance patterns
can foster communication between the relevant sectors.
The interplay between practices, food environments and system representation
depends on the availability of deliberative spaces. Food policies coherent with a
system approach would set forums to foster knowledge creation, develop data silos
to monitor urban metabolism and its sustainability, establish cross-departmental
strategic units and finance projects that address emerging problems with innovative
approaches. Knowledge should reach all involved actors to raise awareness and
provide feedback for individual and collective behaviour. In a logic of transition
towards sustainability, a more secure, sustainable and healthier food environment –
at local, urban and bioregional level – is the one that opens spaces of deliberation to
all actors to reflect on food sustainability, healthiness and morality and to provide
input for knowledge management and for policies.
6 Concluding Remarks
Emerging sustainability issues are increasingly challenging the capacity of cities to

cope and anticipate future and uncertain adversities. An improved understanding of
those drivers and related interactions, especially related to the urban–rural relations,
can help urban administrators change paradigms of decision-making to build resil-
ient cities through a transition to more sustainable practices and governance arrange-
ments. The present work has disentangled a specific reflection on the governance
principles, regulating the urban–rural links, that are necessary to address new sus-
tainability challenges. The transition towards sustainability requires a deep change
in the way people know and live the city. New knowledge brings to modification of
practices, and novelties contribute to new knowledge creation. Within this frame-
work, spaces of deliberation on large issues of public interest are needed to develop
knowledge and share visions towards more sustainable practices regulating urban–
rural interplays. To improve the understanding of the complexity of urban–rural
relationships, when considering urban food systems, we have applied three meta-
phors: the metabolism concept, the circular economy and the assemblage metaphor.
This triangulation of metaphors is particularly fit to the understanding of urban–
rural relations towards transition to sustainability. It approaches governance much
differently from past experiences, allowing for integrating market regulation with
social and technical rules, giving public administrations and civil society a much
greater say on market mechanisms, involving a diversity of actors, visions and rep-
resentations in a common appraisal effort based on deliberation. Thus, according
with the bioregional paradigm, transition to sustainability can be imagined as a
progressive reconfiguration of socio-technical systems (composed of food, waste,
water, energy) built on a local/regional multi-scale process of disassembling and
reassembling people, processes, relations and spaces. With particular regard to
urban and bioregional food system, local food policies can trigger tool applications
to foster knowledge creation, retrieve data on urban metabolism and its sustainabil-
ity, launch cross-cutting strategic groups and promote innovative projects. A
regional – or local – foodshed based on knowledge sharing among all the actors can
allow for transition to sustainability if spaces of deliberation are open, comprehen-
sive and supported by appropriate policies oriented towards food sustainability,
healthiness, morality and knowledge management.
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Looking Forward: Some Opportunities
and Challenges for Bioregional Planning
in Current Policies and Planning
Framework
David Fanfani
1 egionalisms and Bioregionalism: Fostering Pro-activity

R
and Subsidiarity
Regional scale, even if in accordance with different disciplinary “nuances” and heu-
ristic aims, turned out to be in recent decades one of the more relevant issues in (re)
framing the discourse about concepts such as places and regions, economic/local
development issues, and government/governance models and institutions (Paasi
2002, 2009) and about related human settlement patterns and disposals. Despite the
accent posed on the role of regional/local endowments – either in terms of embed-
ded skills and knowledge and of natural resources and landscape qualities – new
regionalism mainly conceived regional, geographical, and institutional spaces as
helpful elements to better rearticulate the overwhelming global economic model
either in terms of corporate competitiveness or of governance institutions, aimed
more to pursue economic effectiveness than social cohesion and environmental fair-
ness and sustainability (Morgan 2004). Obviously it is not this kind of regionalism,
conceived as a latest – financial – stage of the capitalist accumulation process
(Wheeler 2002), that can be assumed as a model to support the recovery of a biore-
gional discourse concerning planning and human development.
Moreover the same can be spoken out about some interpretive models that –
related to the observed regional dimension assumed by the urbanization process –
coined the framework of the “city region” (Rodrìguez-Pose 2008; Jonas 2012) as
leading paradigm sometime adopted as “naturally” given, either in terms of analyti-
cal practices or as design reference model, and not submitted to any critical revision.
Notwithstanding, if these two approaches to regionalism and “city regional-
ism” – very roughly rendered in their possible mainstream interpretations – are not
D. Fanfani (*)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_11
184 D. Fanfani
really close to the bioregional approach and to the regionalist legacy in which it
entrenches, it is not to overlook the relevance that the proposed “shift” of the human
geography discourse entails also for a bioregional reframing of regional planning
and local development matters.
First of all it is worth noting how some remarkable strands of “progressive
regionalism” (Mc Kinnon 2017) paired and enriched – addressing especially issues
of economic and spatial fairness – the mentioned mainstream approach. Moreover,
that combined with some renewed research on local productive systems – as exploit-
ing long-lasting social capital and knowledge endowments – helped to best outline
the underpinning and not negligible role of local/regional heritage in triggering
“from below” local development processes. This, furthermore, also accounting for
the very endogenous nature of development process itself and of self-relied import
replacing economies.
This kind of vision finds room and echoes within the bioregional discourse,
showing how current debate on human settlement and urban/metropolitan develop-
ment could meet and cross some important issues of bioregionalism as well as be
ignited and reframed by its integrated and holistic approach. In particular, that chal-
lenging crossed revision calls us to best focus at least on some issues that feature the
bioregional discourse, which are not so explicitly considered in the general region-
alist geography and territorial sciences.
1.1 ubsidiarity and Urban/Rural New Alliance

S
for the City Bioregion
Co-evolution and Endogenous Approach

First of all for the bioregional approach – regardless of the various scales at which
this paradigm is adopted (Sale 1991) – natural or ecosystem structures and func-
tions constitute the measure to which refers either development goals and policies,
as well as planning and design tools aimed to achieve a regenerative, biophilic, and
fair settlement environment. That, according to a co-evolutionary approach
(Norgaard 1994), points out innovation as a field of collaborative practices between
nature and culture, aimed to integrated ecosystem recovery and “neo-ecosystems”
creation (Magnaghi 2010). This according with le “genie naturel” (Clément 2012)
through which mankind can cooperate in accordance with wider general “natural”
laws and pursuing “co-development” endogenous processes (Jacobs 2001). This
approach overcomes the passive, or at the best, adaptive role designed for ecosys-
tem and long-lasting natural endowments in planning policies and assigns them a
pro-active and underpinning role in defining spatial and development scenario
(Becattini 2015). Moreover, it calls for the adoption and enhancement of a fitting
scale and susbsidiarity principle according to which at each territorial level best
pertain specific powers, committed functions and endeavors. This is according to
joint sovereignty, responsibility, and solidarity principles in order to guide resources
Looking Forward: Some Opportunities and Challenges for Bioregional Planning… 185
management and deliberative processes, especially in terms of self-relied develop-

ment policies and fair “commons” exploitation (Ostrom 2013).
A Bioregional Place Identity: A New Urban/Rural Alliance and Bio-
generative Patterns
Co-evolutionary approach and subsidiarity pose the consequent demand to reframe
in terms of cohesion, solidarity, and integration of the urban/rural relationship. This
with the aim to reframe this duality not in terms of mutual dissolution – as depicted
in some “planetary urbanization visions” – but reaffirming the mutuality and com-
plementarity between the two domains – even if not assured by taken for granted
inherited categories – and contextually and reflexively re(de)fined in each case and
regional/local context (Brenner and Schmid 2015). In particular, as it is well pointed
out by Thayer in his chapter of this book, the bioregional discourse – as aimed to
pursue balanced settlement patterns jointly with spatial and environmental justice
and fairness – can’t avoid to contour the key elements suitable to promote and sup-
port a new alliance between urban and rural domain and between the function of
social actors and the forces that refer to them. These elements demand, indeed, for
a “place specific” and more reflexive approach suitable and strong enough to render
the innovative ways in which the urban and rural dimensions very often weave
together and merge. All this exists in some spatial context where it is very difficult,
sometimes – especially in Western and European countries – to envision the urban
as a built inhabited core surrounded, at the supra-local scale, by wooded or farmland
areas scarcely populated with small rural centers. Urban and rural now mutually
define a dense thread of social, environmental, and cultural relations and flows that,
otherwise, don’t demand, in the bioregional vision, for a definitive dismissal of the
rural as finally withering out in an overwhelming urban environment growth. On the
contrary, it calls – as well highlighted by Thayer – to reverse the current unbalanced
relationship between urban and rural that privileges the former. All that entails a
strategic commitment aimed at the recovery of sustainable settlement patterns and
to support a shared awareness about the values that rural and natural areas embody.
This particularly concerning the ecosystem services those areas can deliver for the
settlement’s overall resilience, amenity, and for the inhabitant’s well-being. In this
context arises, among other matters, an important pressing challenge in the field of
planning to come up with innovative and “bio-generative” design patterns (Thayer
2003) as heuristic and normative models. Those shifting patterns are the ones best
suited either to take into account, appraise, and represent the complexity of the rela-
tionship between our anthropogenic world and our ecosystems, while at the same
time providing us some new normative and also narrative models (EDORA-ESPON
2010), based on relational, integrated, and prestational elements.
186 D. Fanfani
2 ioregional Communitarianism: Local Practices

B
and Reframed Planning
As mentioned, subsidiarity, which casts the form of a new bioregional institutional

project, needs to be fed and fostered by newly empowered bottom-up social activ-
ism and relationships. Ones that very often spontaneously rise up, whereas it has to
find space and public hearings in open, participative, and often radical and strongly
advocated planning practices and tools.
2.1 Local Bioregional Community by Practices
If the bioregion’s design is properly contoured according to various scales (Sale

1991, p. 52–66), its progressive development will be primarily fueled and fostered
by “community-oriented” actions at the human/local scale.
Nevertheless, this “movement” toward local empowerment needs to be fostered
in its bottom-up origins and can’t be conceived only according from a top-down
devolution process, often rendered as the sole approach in administrative and
bureaucratic terms. All that “movement” entails the necessity of reconnecting the
institutional framework to a system of localized actions and socially shared needs
with the fundamental aim to finally pursue joint goals of local development and
ecosystem enhancement and protection (M’Goonigle 1999). That means pursuing a
process of “democracy building from below,” enabling and educating inhabitants to
cope with issues of resource use and depletion at the appropriate scale. A process
that results in the possibility to express on behalf of concerned people some delib-
erative powers and voices about those issues, then in bringing “back to the earth”
dilemmas no longer treatable, in effective terms, at global level or according to the
inherited dialectic between global and local (Latour 2017).
Manifold experiences and practices “on the field” reveal how the bioregion
reconstruction process – be it conceived either to recover the relationship between
urban and rural domain or to enhance the overall conditions of regional/local geo-
ecosystems – is mainly triggered by localized and grassroots re-inhabiting and stew-
ardship initiatives on behalf of population, activists, NGO associations, and similar
groups. Practices that very often stem from conflicts related to public or private
supported projects concerning local resource, values or “commons” exploitation
(e.g. farmland consumption, water corporate management, landscape degradation,
building waste treatment plants, infrastructure constructions, land grabbing, etc.).
In some other cases, such practices are aimed to reclaim, recover, and appropri-
ate for community interest goals, abandoned and disrupted places, and/or the devel-
opment of new “civic” bioregional fair economies based on mutual trust and
self-help (e.g., agri-food communities and pacts, local renewable energy systems,
local currencies, time banks, etc.).
It is from these spontaneous aggregations and practices – often very well orga-
nized – that sense of belonging originates and develops, which firstly paves the way
to the reconstruction of stronger community-based relationships and trust starting
from the places of stewardship and care.
Nevertheless, what is meant here it is not to recover and reintroduce a nostalgic
and comforting idea of community – that in the age of global mobility of goods,
information and peoples, and of strong interconnections of problems and draw-
backs - it is no longer possible to conceive as a selfish and closed “destiny and blood
community”. On the contrary, in this arising framework, the form and the idea of a
“project community” (Castells 1997) are able not only to counter and resist local
shocks but also with new capacities to act in an equitable and proactive way coping
with the local splitting processes induced by the globally induced forces.
The critical focus and challenge entailed by this matter is how to translate, at
least partially, these kinds of grassroots practices and bottom-up initiatives within
the framework of the institutional planning and design tools and how it could
reshape, in this commitment, the role of the bioregional planner. That especially, in
terms of which are the issues and priorities she/he has to cope with in this challeng-
ing commitment that very often needs to critically and swiftly act in contexts
affected by unbalanced power relationships. All this will be addressed, at least in
part, in the next paragraph.
2.2 he Socially Constructive and Revealing Role of Planning

T
(And Not an Easy One for the Planners)
As it is not possible for our society to trigger and enhance subsidiarity using only a
top-down devolution movement, likewise bioregional planning will hardly unfold
its potential without revisioning current technocratic spatial planning practices and
institutional forms. It turns out to be worth, in this sense, the recovery of some
underpinning issues inherited from the regional planning tradition. About that it
firstly comes to the foreground the recovery and development of the educational
value and role of regional planning that, drawing also on the RPAA and southern
regionalism of E.W. Odum, represents a key factor in promoting place awareness
jointly with community commitment. A dimension mainly ignored by current forms
of planning.
That direction means employing a requirement of going beyond the best intended
informational, communicative, and hearing practices in planning and design tools,
to focus ourselves on the requisite cornerstone of firstly developing and empower-
ing open and shared knowledge about territory, place, and city. The aim here would
be to enable citizens and inhabitants to develop a critical eye and proactive role
toward establishing policies and planning goals as genuine participants in the
process.
188 D. Fanfani
Furthermore, intertwined with this “Looking Forward” approach, of better

engaging citizens, goes together an aim of “reactivating” contextual skillsets and
knowledge bases, not yet having been totally forgotten or made inoperative by the
current and overwhelming technocratic approach that dominates planning.
According to this proposed evolution, the planning role is not so much geared to
“explain” applying technical procedures presumed as being at the heart or “very”
nature of territorial features and processes; rather it turns out to be also a “revealing”
role, that is, one aimed to unravel embodied regional and territory potentialities
entrenched in the long run, but not yet expressed, as – quoting again Benton
MacKaye – “what that belongs to the ages” (B. MacKaye 1928, cit.) and which are
very often cognitive endowments of contextual and ordinary knowledge.
In this framework, the “enabling” value of the planning process relates, first of
all, to the structuration of shared and inclusive deliberative process aimed to elicit
such a cognitive domain in the context of spatial planning tool formation.
Nevertheless, in accordance with the bioregional paradigm, participative planning
techniques and practices cannot be considered as neutral technical procedures, that
is, it has to take into account current “power asymmetries” and imbalances, either in
terms of resource use and distribution or in relation to the socio-spatial arrange-
ments corresponding to those imbalances.
That goes to particularly address the different “voice” possibilities (Hirshmann
1970) that the various social actors are able to exert within the planning field and,
especially, the empowerment of the various “weak interest” (e.g., ecosystems, future
generations, urban agriculture, etc.) in coping with more structured conditioning of
social group and lobbying interests.
Conceived in these terms, a bioregional approach entails a strong promotion and
practice of empowering action, and sometimes of advocacy, on behalf of the planner
himself/herself. In accordance with engaging that planner role and responsibility, it
is not necessarily contoured as a “third” and neutral one in reference to the issues at
stake. The participative and deliberative process construction itself also encom-
passes social demand and a problematic framework requiring reframing as well as
addressing arising conflict management issues.
In this sense, what resonates as best fitting – and a little bit comforting – may be
Rob Thayer’s words according to which the regional planner role if it “… do not
provide professional planner with a road to riches … (it) … can provide consider-
ably more in the way of a moral and ethical job satisfaction for their participants”
(Thayer 2003, p. 170).
3 I ntegrating Spatial Planning and Local Development:

Promoting Self-Reliance and Fairness
Indeed, and finally, bioregional planning, considering its interwoven social, eco-
logical, and fairness goals, has also to deal with development and sustaining of the
living in place issues. Aiming to express and pursue new ways to generate “expan-
sion” and “co-production” to sustain life (Jacobs 2001, cit). Drawing on Berg and
Dasmann (Berg and Dasmann 1977), the latter means “… following the necessities
and pleasure of life as they are uniquely presented by a particular site, and evolving
ways to ensure long-term occupancy of that site.” Whereas, substantially, reinhabi-
tation is the process by which some humans, either individuals or groups, learn
again how to be living in place, settling there according to the limits and potentiali-
ties of that particular place. This also starting from conditions of disruption due to
past or inherited production, exploitive practices, or “lost landscapes” (Power 1996).
In this framework, too, continuity between an RPAA regionalist movement and
bioregionalism appears evident. According to MacKaye (1928, cit), indeed, regional
planning has to be conceived – starting from human needs and human desires and
bequeathed limits of nature. As an activity “revealing” of the potentialities of a
region – often not evident to sectoral gaze - and of its various opportunities “to con-
trol a single actuality” (MacKaye 1928, cit. p. 153). Planning, then, is not a matter
to grasp upon with unique and technically correct answers, in a linear/mechanical
process, adhering to a previously defined set of sectorally established issues, but
instead to envision some possible co-evolutive pathways and scenarios either at dif-
ferent scales (Sale 1991, cit.) or according with different time thresholds. So it is
also – in accordance with bioregionalist claims – a highly “strategic” activity pursu-
ing “… the visualizing within a region of coordinated action for the purpose of
general human living” (MacKaye 1928, cit. p. 153).
It is in accordance with these overall coordinates that – we believe – bioregional
development and economy discourse can be unfolded and specified. Natural limits
become potentialities, in a revealing process hinged upon the study of the long-
lasting and regional heritage, inherited in the long term, and of the co-evolutionary
process from which such heritage originated. In this kind of discourse also “endog-
enous recovery” (Gotlieb 1996) or “regenerative” regions and, especially, city
regions are worth to be considered and reframed in an innovative way. That is, as
heuristic model that denotate opportunities to retrieve the condition of living-in-
place through development of place-based and proximity economies. Especially by
reducing exogenous dependency - in terms of energy, matter and good flows – and
also by empowering circular flows as well as deeper self-reliance, although not self-
sufficient and closed/autarchic-economies.
Here it rests another challenge for bioregional approach in planning domain.
That is, pursuing local bioregional development means not only analyzing and
appraising natural and ecosystem limits, depletion and functions. It also seeks for
pointing out the opportunities for recovering economies based on the strong and
retrieved general interaction between nature and culture, long-lasting spatial
190 D. Fanfani
patterns, and natural structures. This turns out in “revealing,” through this relation,
the best regional/local development strategy and scenarios, according to a measure
of human well-being, justice, and living world stewardship. It entails for the biore-
gional planner to cope with the endeavor of denoting, representing, and mentoring
this integration, either by introducing innovative issues and methods in the field of
planning or by supporting and triggering bottom-up participatory practices. It is a
new way forward to look to our territorial heritage, as a “genetic pool,” represent-
ing – in analogy with Roegen’s flow-fund model – both the active, ruling reproduc-
tive conditions and the matter concerned with the development process itself.
Therefore, this idea of local bioregional development calls for new ways to explore
and conceive our regional resources, as a model of planning and design aimed to
purpose new key issues and recognize grassroots practices for bioregional recovery
and co-evolution as well as introducing and proposing new integrative methods of
survey and design fitting with this goal. It is not an easy agenda or endeavor for
practitioners and “reflexive” bioregional “researchers in action” to accomplish.
Some possible “steps forward” and other issues, stemming from facing that chal-
lenge, will be explored in Volume II of this book.
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Short Glossary
Maria Rita Gisotti
1 Territory/Territorio
The concept of territory, as conceived by the Italian territorialist school, is intended

as “the result of long-lasting co-evolutionary processes between human settlement
and the natural environment and between culture and nature” (Magnaghi 1998, p. 3;
Magnaghi 1990, p. 26). Its origins lie in the cross-fertilisation between spatial plan-
ning and other disciplines: three contributions are considered particularly important
for the development of this concept. The first of these is the structural interpretation
of places and regions adopted by Italian historical geographers such as Lucio Gambi
and Emilio Sereni (who in turn had been inspired by Marc Bloch and Fernand
Braudel of the French Annales school). “When we talk about territory” – Gambi
states – “we don’t evoke an abstract space, but a space defined and determined by
specific features or, rather, by a system of relationships that unifies these features”
(Gambi 1986, p. 103). The “fairly mature awareness” (ivi) that inhabitants possess
of the uniqueness of the region in which they dwell, presides over the construction
of that territory. Sereni develops a similar concept, interpreting anthropogenic
action as based on “awareness” and a “systematic” vision (Sereni 2001, I ed.1961).
The historical-geographic approach is further developed by Claude Raffestin
(Raffestin 1984), Angelo Turco’s (Turco 1988) reflections on the territorialisation
process (which they divide into three main phases) and Massimo Quaini and Claudio
Greppi’s thoughts on landscapes.
The second important contribution comes from Saverio Muratori and the Italian
school of planning typology.1 Their study of enduring rules for constructing the
1
Saverio Muratori, Italian architect and historian, 1910–1973. Founder of the outstanding school
of urban morphology and architectural typology studies (see Cataldi 2002).
M. R. Gisotti (*)
e-mail: mariarita.gisotti@unifi.it

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45870-6_12
194 M. R. Gisotti
built environment at different scales resulted in the definition of a territorial type (an
element – together with building type, urban fabric and urban organism – that struc-
tures anthropogenic space): this element is defined as a “… concept of territory,
appropriate to a given historical period and place that the inhabitants of that place
instinctively understand and follow; it is a spontaneous awareness of the area in
which they live that encompasses how they experience that territory, how they
decide where to settle and where to set up their productive activity” (Caniggia,
Maffei 1979, p. 238).
“Awareness” of the relationships that connect territorial structures characterises
this conceptualisation of territory; more recently, Giuseppe Dematteis (Dematteis
1995) affirmed that this awareness provided an “implicit” set of guidelines for terri-
tory design. The third contribution to enrich the concept of territory comes from
critical reflections which Françoise Choay (1973) has described as “humanistic”;
these reflections are greatly influenced by the writings and work of Lewis Mumford
and of his beloved mentor Patrick Geddes.
Geddes’ heritage in territorialist thought is articulated on different levels: one
relates to the uniqueness of a place that “…has a true personality; and with this
shows some unique elements a personality too much asleep it may be, but which it
is the task of the planner, as master artist, to awaken” (Geddes 1915, p. 397); another
relates to the city conceived as a “living being, in constant relation to its environ-
ment; and with the advantages of this, its limitations too” (ibidem, p. 264); and a
third level refers to the “political”, collective and community dimensions involved
in creating/developing a sense of place. “Eutopia, then, lies in the city around us;
and it must be planned and realised, here or nowhere, by us as its citizens each a citi-
zen of both the actual and the ideal city seen increasingly as one” (ibidem p. vii). To
sum up, the territorialist approach conceives territory as a co-evolutionary, collec-
tive, structural construct, as the expression of an updated relationship between the
physical, built and social environment.
2 Territorial Heritage/Patrimonio Territoriale
The concept of territorial heritage stems from a structural interpretation of terri-

tory2: the definition, provided in the Tuscany Region Spatial Planning Act,
L. 65/2014 Rules for territory planning,3 states that “Territorial heritage includes all
long-lasting structures that are the result of co-evolution between the natural envi-
ronment and human settlements, the value of which is acknowledged for present
and future generations”. According to this Tuscan law, and the Territorial Regional
Plan (PIT)4 associated with it, these structures refer to four fundamental c omponents
2
See glosssary entry Territory.
3
Norme per il Governo del Territorio.
4
Piano d’Indirizzo Territoriale Regionale (PIT).
Short Glossary 195
of the territory: hydro-geomorphology, ecosystems, settlements and agroforestry.

Allowing for minor lexical variations, most heritage-oriented territorial plans drawn
up recently in Italy follow the same approach.
In the “layers” deposited by territorialisation/co-evolution processes, it is possi-
ble to identify relationships that interact with parts of these structures which, by
virtue of their own “meta-historic rationality” (Baldeschi 2000), appear to be per-
manent or persistent with respect to transformative historical processes.
These are principles which reflect the morphogenetic role of the territory whose
visible interface is represented by the relationships that connect, for instance, soil
structure and settlement systems, with the latter usually established in safe areas
with stable geo-morphological characteristics. Within this interpretive framework,
it is important to note that not all parts of the territory endowed with historic attri-
butes can be considered territorial heritage: areas closely tied to specific social and
economic activities that are now extinct or in decline are destined to be preserved
only as testimonials.
The heritage approach is then intrinsically dynamic and project oriented; it is
somewhat similar to Mumford’s “usable past” or to Saverio Muratori’s concept of
“active history”. As the Italian landscape planner and scholar Roberto Gambino has
underlined, heritage should not be conceived as an “…inert reservoir of unrelated,
heterogeneous ‘things’ from which to extract whatever is needed from time to time
[but rather as] a more-or-less coherent and interconnected system of tangible and
intangible historical, cultural and natural heritage, of belonging and relationship
networks that connect places and social formations […]. It is here that a survey can
discover the ‘roots of the future’ […] with which to develop territorial plans and
projects” (Gambino 2011, p. 140).
The remarkable analytical, interpretive and structural descriptive phase that usu-
ally characterises the surveys which underpin the territorialist approach to elaborat-
ing strategic scenarios and plans does not aim “to transform the territory into a
museum or to copy forms from the past, but rather seeks to obtain guidelines dic-
tated by environmental wisdom for the transformation project” (Magnaghi
2000, p. 64).
A crucial issue is raised at this point, which if not addressed makes it impossible
to effectively protect and reproduce territorial heritage: it is essential that all partici-
pants in transformative territorial processes (professionals, public administrators,
politicians, inhabitants, NGOs) play an active role in recognising the implications of
rationality and sustainability (environmental, economic, social) embodied in heri-
tage and in promoting its modernisation as a reservoir of design principles.
3 Structural Invariant/Invariante Strutturale
From an epistemological point of view, the term “invariant” has been borrowed
from a wide range of disciplines, ranging from natural sciences to mathematics
and linguistics (Saragosa 2011, Maggio 2014). It was first adopted in spatial
196 M. R. Gisotti
planning – along with the term “structure” – in the Tuscany Region Law on Spatial
Planning n. 5/1995, although a similar term, “territorial invariants”, was used in the
1987 Landscape Plan for the Emilia Romagna Region (Bottino 1987, p. 51). The
term “structural invariant” was introduced in an innovative disciplinary context
where the objective was to provide an alternative to predominantly quantitative/
functionalist planning criteria.5 A structural approach to the territory was developed
as a theoretical and operative paradigm capable of addressing sustainable develop-
ment issues. In addition to the “territorialist school” contribution (Poli 2010),
Bernardo Secchi’s innovative work on the concept of “territorial structure” should
also be mentioned. This concept was applied to Siena’s Municipal Plan,6 drawn up
in the early 1990s, and is described in the journal Urbanistica (Di Biagi, Gabellini
1990). The Tuscany Planning Law 5/1995 includes the concept of “structural invari-
ants” in its normative apparatus but does not provide a definition. Significant meth-
odological developments for defining this concept came in the following years from
working procedures in Tuscany: in 1998 the Territorial Coordination Plan of the
Province of Florence identified the basic structural invariant as “the deep structure
of the territory, that is, the persistent and resistant underlying structure of settlement
and landscape”. Territorial Coordination Plans with similar analytical and applica-
tive paradigms were drawn up for three other Tuscan provinces (Arezzo, Prato and
Siena) in the same period. The Tuscany Regional Law on Territorial Planning
(L. 1/2005) provides a codified normative formulation (albeit a rather confusing
one) of structural invariants. Despite the somewhat flawed definition – its formula-
tion employs a repetitive (though not strictly tautological) mechanism to define the
invariants and the related concept of the Territory Statute – this law introduces an
important development because it highlights the relational value of structural invari-
ants and their role in providing performance parameters for functions associated
with sustainable territorial systems (e.g. settlements and landscape patterns, hydro-
geomorphological structure, ecological networks, etc.) which enable the sustainable
reproduction of the territory. This development represents a fundamental re-
appraisal of the concept of “structural invariant” in a dynamic and design sense,
subtracting it, at least in theory, from erroneous interpretations that focus only on
the term “invariant”, considering the objects that fall within this category to be “fro-
zen” and in need of static conservative action only (e.g. listed heritage). The Spatial
Planning Regional Law 65/2014 that identifies structural invariants as “the specific
features, the generative principles and the rules that assure the reproduction of qual-
ifying and identitary components of the territorial heritage” concludes the develop-
ment of the concept of “structural variant” in Tuscany.
This concept has been applied in some other Italian regional contexts, especially
in regional territorial/landscape plans (Gisotti 2016; Marson 2016) as in the Tuscan
5
There were a number of innovative regional initiatives in this period that were designed to provide
an alternative to the outdated 1949 National Planning Act.
6
Urban Development Plan.
Short Glossary 197
Territorial Regional Plan (PIT), in Calabria (QTRP)7, Friuli Venezia Giulia (PPR)8
and Apulia (PPTR) plans.9 The Apulia plan, in particular, introduces a rigorous dis-
tinction – essential for ensuring an effective application and articulation of regula-
tory and protection levels – between the structures that make up the territorial
palimpsest and the “invariant rules” that underpin the reproduction of territorial
heritage (Barbanente 2015).
4 Territorial Statute/Statuto del Territorio
The concept of Territory Statute is inseparable from that of Structural Invariant. It

first appeared in the Tuscany Regional Planning Law 5/1995 with the title of Place
Statute.10 The definition was ambiguous, but it contributed – along with some other
regional Italian disciplinary and normative advancements, such as the “founding
description” in the Liguria Regional Planning Law 36/1997 – to a radical rethinking
of the approach to and contents of regional and local plans. These plans ceased to be
“containers” for future infrastructure and development and became documents
focussed on establishing a shared awareness and acknowledgement of resources and
values to be mobilised and enhanced for sustainable development goals. A year after
Law 5/95 was approved, Mario Cusmano (Cusmano 1996, p. 12) enriched the initial
definition of the Statute of Places, by introducing a meaningful interpretation of the
concept of Territory Statute which he defined as a “charter of rights and duties
toward a collective good which, in turn, is a product and heritage of the action of a
collectivity and of single actors”.
Similarly, Alberto Magnaghi calls the Statute a “constitutional act for local
development”: “a project for a socially shared future” (Magnaghi 2000, p. 125).
Considering the wide range of reflections that this notion entails, it is worth under-
lining at least two of them: the first one regards citizen participation in planning
process issues and the second one the use of innovative forms and techniques for
plan representation. With regard to citizen participation, the process of recognising
the invariant rules required for planning the transformation of the territory needs to
be dialogical and inclusive; negotiation is also essential so that conflict, whilst
unavoidable, can enrich the construction processes of the plan planning processes
and the strategic scenarios arising therefrom (Fanfani 2007). Planning experience
has demonstrated that it is impossible for the process of acknowledging territorial
transformation rules to be negotiated using consensus building and mediating the
issues posed by different social actors. In this process, conflicts have to be assumed
as an unavoidable dimension, stemming from either a power imbalance within
7
QTRP-Quadro Territoriale Regionale Paesaggistico (Regional Territorial Landscape Framework).
8
PPR-Piano Paesaggistico Regionale.(Regional Landscape Plan).
9
PPTR-Piano Paesaggistico Territoriale Regionale (Regional Territorial Landscape Plan).
10
Statuto dei Luoghi.
198 M. R. Gisotti
society or from the relevance of the issues at stake (Fanfani 2007). In this regard,
reflections on the statutory planning model and its implementation have resulted in
a vast and diversified set of research/implementation practices – University educa-
tion, where the echoes of Geddesian influence are clear and strong, has played a role
in this – which aim to create a new role for local society in territorial planning and
design processes (Paba et al. 2009).
The other major research front opened by the aforementioned disciplinary nor-
mative specifications and innovations was the codification of the so-called identity
and statutory representation. In 2010 Roberto Gambino stated: “A new idea of the
territory – which embodies a new idea of the relationship with places – requires new
representations” (Gambino 2010, p. 73). The transition from territory conceived as
a blank sheet, to territory seen as a dense stratified subject, rich in assets, to be trans-
lated into invariant rules shared in the “constitutional” paper as represented by the
Statute, has also used the enormous potential offered by the Geographical
Information System (GIS) and its related tools to produce atlases, heritage maps and
scenario visions that are more readily understood than traditional cartography and
are able to stimulate the social production processes within the territory
(Lucchesi 2005).
References
Baldeschi, P. (2000). Il Chianti fiorentino. Un progetto per la tutela del paesaggio. Roma-Bari:
Laterza.
Barbanente, A. (2015). Il Piano paesaggistico della Regione Puglia. Sentieri Urbani, 17, 46–53.
Bottino, F. (1987). Dal vincolo al Piano. Urbanistica, 87, 48–53.
Caniggia, G., & Maffei, G. L. (1979). Composizione architettonica e tipologia edilizia. 1 Lettura
dell’edilizia di base. Venezia: Marsilio.
Cataldi, G. (2002). Saverio Muratori and the Italian School of Planning Typology. Urban
Morphology, 1(6), 3–14.
Choay, F. (1973). La città. Utopie e realtà. Torino: Einaudi (first ed. 1965).
Cusmano, M. G. (1996). Il territorio del piano. Paesaggio urbano, 3, 10–12.
Dematteis, G. (1995). Progetto implicito. Il contributo della geografia umana alle scienze del ter-
ritorio. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Di Biagi, P., Gabellini, P. (Ed.) (1990). Il nuovo piano regolatore di Siena. In Urbanistica 99, 31–88.
Fanfani, D. (2007). Gli scenari strategici nel dibattito internazionale e nell’approccio statutario ed
identitario del governo del territorio: un modello interpretativo. In A. Magnaghi (Ed.), Scenari
strategici. Visioni identitarie per il progetto di territorio (pp. 33–46). Firenze: Alinea.
Gambi, L. (1986). La costruzione dei piani paesistici. Urbanistica, 85, 102–105.
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Città, territori, progetti. 2, Il progetto territorialista. Firenze: All’insegna del Giglio.
(Special Issue).
Gambino, R. (2011). Patrimonio e senso del paesaggio (riconoscere il patrimonio territoriale). In
G. Paolinelli (Ed.), Habitare. Il paesaggio nei piani territoriali. Milano: Franco Angeli.
Geddes, P. (1915). Cities in evolution. An introduction to the town planning movement and to the
study of civics. London: Williams & Norgate.
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e una proposta per un modello operativo. In A. Magnaghi (Ed.), La pianificazione paesaggis-
tica in Italia. Stato dell’arte e innovazioni (pp. 1–35). Firenze: Firenze University Press.
Lucchesi, F. (2005). Il territorio, il codice, la rappresentazione. Il disegno dello statuto dei luoghi.
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Milano: Dunod.
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il Piano della Toscana. Bari: Laterza.
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David Fanfani

Alberto Matarán Ruiz Editors

Bioregional Planning and

ISBN 978-3-030-45869-0 ISBN 978-3-030-45870-6 (eBook)

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Part I Rethinking Places for Community Life

Part II Fields for (Re)framing Planning in Bioregional Sense

Agriurban Commons. Which Resistance

Dimas Wisnu Adrianto School of Environment, Education and Development,

Sergio De La Pierre School of Architecture, Florence University, Milan, Italy

Luca Salvati Department of Economics and Law, University of Macerata,

Alberto Matarán Ruiz is PhD in Environmental Science and Associate

David Fanfani and Alberto Matarán Ruiz

1  he Crisis of Civilization: From Development

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 1

… it is indeed an auto-partial crisis, a cultural crisis of civilization, an industrial-economic

2  he Global Ecological Crisis as a Matter Related

prevailing ‘extractive’ model of capitalistic accumulation (Sassen 2012, 2014).

3 Issues for Sustainable Settlements Patterns and Design

Built environment produced by anthropogenic actions is being called into question

previously described trends and the general framework—as well as including a

4  he Crisis of the City

5  nergetic and Socio-ecologic Transitions as the Main Issue

The above-mentioned multidimensional crisis determines a high degree of unsus-

6  he Bio-regional Model and the Urban Bioregion

• governance bottom-up and federal cooperation, local willingness and univer-

an ‘underpinning image’ in supporting new plans, projects and practices to inhabit

7 Volume Aims, Topics and ‘Spirit’

In this volume I Bioregional Planning and Design. Perspective on a transitional

8  inal Remarks. Recovering a New Relationship Between

As shown by the previous points, the bioregional approach represents a paradigm in

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 17

American proponent, author, and formerly cheerful booster of bioregional thought

2 The Great American Divide

3 My Definition of Bioregional Practice

3.1 The State of Jefferson

In 1941, some disgruntled residents of the borderlands of northern California and

3.2 The Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument

In 1997, an organization was formed at the conjunction of Lake, Napa, Colusa,

3.3 The Klamath River Accords

4 The Geography of the Great American Divide

To extrapolate from the three examples of regional identity mentioned above, it is

5 Causes of the Great American Divide

It is widely assumed by many observers that current US President Donald Trump

7 Reversing the Flow of Value

First, however, we must take a theoretical detour; there is another phenomenon at

raising, forestry, or mining. This is merely a fault of ignorance due to diminishing

9  Model Bioregional Organization: The Center

Located in rural agricultural lands in Solano County, California, there is a highly

1 From Contemporary Urbanisation to Urban Bioregion

The astounding dimensional growth of contemporary urbanisation—the UN esti-

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 33

regional dimension of functional communities, to ethereal communications in

2 Definition of Urban Bioregion

Urban bioregion is the appropriate conceptual reference for a territorial project

coevolutionary balance between human settlement and the environment, re-­

Geddes’ bio-anthropocentric definition of “valley section” (1915), especially where

An urban bioregion is a local territorial system characterised by:

In this coevolutionary vision of the relationships between human settlement and

3  esigning the Urban Bioregion: A Glossary

Part I Rethinking Places for Community Life

Part II Fields for (Re)framing Planning in Bioregional Sense

Agriurban Commons. Which Resistance

1 he Crisis of Civilization: From Development

2 he Global Ecological Crisis as a Matter Related

3 Issues for Sustainable Settlements Patterns and Design

4 he Crisis of the City

5 nergetic and Socio-ecologic Transitions as the Main Issue

6 he Bio-regional Model and the Urban Bioregion

7 Volume Aims, Topics and ‘Spirit’

8 inal Remarks. Recovering a New Relationship Between

2 The Great American Divide

3 My Definition of Bioregional Practice

3.1 The State of Jefferson

3.2 The Berryessa Snow Mountain National Monument

3.3 The Klamath River Accords

4 The Geography of the Great American Divide

5 Causes of the Great American Divide

7 Reversing the Flow of Value

9 Model Bioregional Organization: The Center

1 From Contemporary Urbanisation to Urban Bioregion

2 Definition of Urban Bioregion

coevolutionary balance between human settlement and the environment, re-

3 esigning the Urban Bioregion: A Glossary

3.1 erritorial and Landscape Cultures and Knowledge

3.2 nvironmental Frameworks as the “Material Foundation”

3.3 rban Centralities and Their Polycentric

consists of inhabited countryside (scattered rural buildings, hamlets, farms, farm-

3.3.1 Cities of Villages (Ecopolis)

3.3.2 Cities of Cities

3.4 roduction Systems That Enhance the Value

3.5 ocal Energy Resources for Bioregional

3.6 Agro-forestry Structures and Their Multifunctional Values

3.6.1 Producing Urban Quality: Urban and Periurban Agriculture

3.6.2 roducing Environmental Balances and Ecosystem Services:

3.6.3 istoric Rural Landscapes and Production of Knowledge

3.6.4 Revival of the Peasant Mode of Production and Rural Repopulation

3.7 tructures for Self-Government and Social Production

3.7.1 From Participation to Social Production of Territories

3.7.2 Bioregional Self-Government Institutions

non-hierarchical and complementary (Thayer 2013)—with other bioregions and

4 Towards a Planet of Urban Bioregions

2 Modernity and Capitalism: The End of a Story

3 Towards an Economy Rooted in Caring for Life

3.1 ustainable Access and Management of Resources:

3.2 bout the Social Reorganization of the Activity

3.3 ritical Consumption and a Stable Connection

3.4 eyond the Material Question: Epistemology of the South

1 The Concept of Ecosystem and the Human Settlement

C. Saragosa () · M. Chiti ()

2 The Generation of a Bioregional World

3 Spatial Configuration and World Generation

4 Generation Method That Has Its Roots in Life

5 orm (Morphology) and Flow (Ecology), Empathy

2 iverse Approaches to Social Justice and Their Use