Archive of SID The Management of Green Areas in the Urban Environment

In the simple meaning of green areas nature is expected to carry out many functions in an urban context, which are useful to explain the descriptive characters needed for the analysis and comprehension of specific phenomena. Besides being a significant component of the urban scene, vegetation is also one of the most appreciated: generally speaking, vegetation is synonymous with quality. The structural pattern of green areas, which apparently occupies uneven spaces among buildings, regulates in fact the planning order of the fabric of the city, as an organic system, in which its matrix organises and shows the social mechanisms of the city itself. Starting from a general scheme, the research has to discover the criteria which determined the structure of the environmental and “naturalistic” scene of a specific site, considering the various elements which can illustrate the cognitive context of the territory itself. The comprehension of the site characteristics and the trends of certain phenomena thus becomes crucial to supervise and control the territorial development respecting its qualities with an efficient filing system. The survey then becomes an indispensable instrument for knowledge which is not limited to the analysis of a specific situation but should lead to the understanding of possible associations and connections. Due to these complex relationships the research cannot be limited to a single professional, but needs to integrate different professionals: landscape surveyors, botanists and specialists on plant protection as entomologists and pathologists. Therefore a system of analysis was experimented, from a general perspective to a detailed one, considering all the intermediate degrees. Through the studies of the relationships between the different steps, the connections between the scale of human perception and the scale of territorial management may be understood.