La progettazione del territorio e del paesaggio come pratica sociale

In recent decades, due to a combination of factors both internal and external to the discipline, the role traditionally assigned to planning instruments in guiding, regulating, and designing territorial transformations has significantly weakened. The extension of the landscape condition to the entire territory, as introduced by the European Landscape Convention, has highlighted the limitations of a long-standing tradition of Italian landscape governance, which has been primarily focused on protecting individual assets of “exceptional beauty” or significant environmental value, often isolated from their territorial context and from the practices of use and transformation associated with them. This essay focuses on certain cognitive and design tools contained in recent regional landscape plans, with particular attention to the Regional Territorial Landscape Plan (Piano Paesaggistico Territoriale Regionale – PPTR) of Puglia. It draws attention to bottom-up plans, projects, and actions activated in various parts of the region by socio-cultural actors and local authorities, analyzing initiatives that demonstrate the ability to envision alternative possible futures compared to prevailing modes of territorial transformation. It also highlights the relationships these initiatives have established with different components of the PPTR: from the heritage-based reading of the territory, to the future visions proposed in the strategic scenario, to experimental integrated projects, and the participatory and governance tools aimed at the social production of the landscape.