Environmental and economic sustainability of the quarries system in the Metropolitan Area of Bari

The case study is the Metropolitan Area of Bari, one of the metropolitan cities indicated by the reform of the italian provinces, as planned by Law nr. 56 of 7th of April 2014 “Dispositions on the metropolitan cities, provinces and unions or fusions of municipalities (Legge Delrio)”, that imagines, for ten metropolitan cities in Italy, the construction of an administrative and institutional process that could innovate the metropolitan territories with a strategic development approach. The new “Territorial Authorities of the wide areas” will need to take and actualize the Strategic Metropolitan Plan with a territorial planning looking more closely at infrastructures, coordinated management of the public services, development of mobility and viability systems and structures, coordination of urban planning, promotion of economic and social development, strenghtening the information and digital systems. The Metropolitan City of Bari is a wide area with a strong polycentric weave constituted by 41 municipalities, some of them having a significant dimension, placed around the regional capital and organized in two coronas supplementary to the open spaces of the country side, sometimes compromised with a situation of sprawl and land consumption, due to the tendence of the urban center to join together.