Landscape design and sustainable development: from smart City to the smart Land

The paper aims at discussing the issues of the integration between planning, landscape and sustainability. These themes are nowadays very much debated internationally. By now the cities’ progress cannot be considered regardless of the territorial planning and Landscape design, dealing with different aspects such as sustainability, preservation, valorization of local specific features and attractions and the urban and territorial development. These matters are considered in two recent debates: on one hand the Proposals concerning the desirability of a standard-setting Instrument on historic urban landscapes, General Conference, 36th Session, Paris 2011 and on the other hand the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) and the following updates from the United Nation Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in 1992 - also known as the Rio Summit - the last of which is the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development held in 2012 - commonly called Rio+20. These statements are only an exemplification of a major debate that has originated the trend of including in the planning practices different themes. It should include technological solutions, social aspects, use of the new Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) to preserve and promote the local specific features and attractions as drivers for the growth and the territorial competitiveness. Following the previous considerations it is necessary to move from the concept of ‘smart City’ to extend the point of view in a territorial scale, disregarding political boundaries, considering elements of identity as well as historical, geomorphological and territorial features. The latters have characterized the territory and its development and these are potential elements for the definition of compact, connected and competitive areas: the ‘smart Lands’. Subsequently to this initial stage of knowledge, a planning phase should follow as well as a communication strategy in the last stage. All these steps have to exploit the potentialities of the communication and information tools available, after having established a proper oversight interdisciplinary team. This working group should be able to supervise the integration among agriculture, food, cultural landscape planning, environmental preservation, sustainable regeneration and local development in order to guarantee an enduring growth. The suggestions outlined would allow a development both in the social and economic sphere that should not run out in the short period, in opposition with the unscrupulous logic that has dried out the territory, the landscape, the cultural heritage and has led to a loss of identity of the places, justified by a misleading economic profit.