Landscape and rural territories in sustainable contemporary cities: the Italian case in Tuscany

The meaning of sustainability in the contemporary city can be rediscovered by considering the question under three aspects: the history of human settlements as rural/industrial evolution. the progressive cancellation/reduction of rural quality by the hardly invasive industrial transformations both in the urban spaces and in the social culture which causes a) disfigurement of traditional agricultural structures which had characterized landscape; b) technological invasion in every part of the rural and urban spaces; c) destruction and subordination to industrial philosophy of ecological relations man/society/environment. the key of sustainable recovery in contemporary cities can be imagined in a new rurality, perceived, desired and strongly agreed by human societies, by means of appropriate processes of perception, creative knowledge, no longer in terms of opposition (rural vs urban) but in terms of new alliance (urban and rural together, towards a new wholeness of human settlements). This paper reconsiders the question under the planning action's point of view and, through a study case in Tuscany, suggests some experiential way (to restore the place specificity, to recognize Bio-region as environment for the life of a new human collectivity) and to take steps towards sustainability in contemporary European and Mediterranean contexts.