Socio-Ecological Connectivity for Productive, Circular and Resilient Territories. The Experience of the "Saturn" EIT Climate-KIC Pan European Project

Abstract

Since the European conference on Sustainable Cities and Towns happened in Aalborg in 1994 the urgency to promote a more balanced relationship and to enhance the reconnection between urban and rural areas became a matter of discussion in research and policy-making. A further important push towards the implementation of reconnection strategies occurred in 1997 with the European Conference on Rural Development. Nowadays, many stakeholders involved in territorial and landscape planning, in order to implement a new relationship between cities and countryside, aim to remove rural areas from margins, to bring citizens closer to the urgent need to safeguard the entire natural ecosystem, and to preserve rural areas and the ecosystem services they provide. The food system can be a key of reconnection between urban and rural areas and has a great impact on materials and energy flows in the metabolism of a city-region. The contribution will explore the spatial transformation of urban and rural landscapes in the city of Trento through a multidisciplinary lens on social dynamics and the governance of food policies.