Designing a sustainable urban landscape. Between urban and rural morphologies

Territorial and landscape morphology is the basis of urban design. Public open spaces play an important role in the dynamics of urban and metropolitan development, especially when the city meets interstices or peripheral rural areas, and correlates to sustainable processes of change in social, economic and environmental evolution. This is particularly relevant in the case of small and medium-sized cities, which are set in direct connection with natural territorial structure, and with fragments of agrarian fabrics (Donadieu 1998). In these cases, territorial analysis and landscape design can help in adopting and implementing integrated strategic plans for enhancing the relationship between the different systems of the urban environment (Caniggia 1976). This paper aims at dealing with the role of landscape architecture in defining a consistent urban revitalization, in connection with the urban morphology and the territorial structure (Neglia 2018). Spanning from analysis to design, it aims at presenting some landscape design-based proposals for the urban regeneration of the southern coastal area of Bari, a medium-sized city in southern Italy, through the reconstruction of linkages between urban, natural (McHarg 1969) and rural areas (UN-Habitat 2019). The argumentation of design proposals will clarify the increasingly needed relationship between landscape architecture and urban morphology, as well as between territorial analysis, interpretation of the local forms, and sustainable use and re-use of environmental resources.