The resources
made available by Europe to Italy with the Recovery Fund (207 billion euros)
will also serve for greening our cities. The Ministry of Environment has
decided what will be the nine strategic projects for our Country, with an
investment of 12.3 billion euros, financed by the EU to boost and stimulate the
economy after the crisis caused by Covid-19 pandemic. Among these (in second
place, as a financing size, among those held by the Minister), there is the
project “Foreste urbane resilienti per il benessere dei cittadini”, to which
2.5 billion euros will be destined and which provide for a series of actions
oriented to 14 metropolitan cities. The project, developed by the Comitato per lo Sviluppo
del Verde Pubblico established at the Ministry
of Environment, will create the Strategia Nazionale del
Verde Urbano.
This Strategy defines standards and guidelines for the promotion of urban and
semi-urban forests consistent with environmental, historical, cultural and
landscape characteristics of places. It is based on three essential elements:
- going from
square meter to hectares
- reducing
asphalt surfaces
- adopting
urban forests as a structural and functional reference of urban green.
Urban forest
includes all the perspectives of urban green, like patches of wood, tree-lined
avenues, large parks, urban gardens, gardens, historical villas, green quarter
and architectural green including vertical forest and green roofs.
“Strategia
Nazionale – as the experts who realized the document point out - also provides for the participation of
stakeholders and of inevitably multidisciplinary skills to develop adequate
public policy and to address municipal authorities towards the realization of
plans and projects based on ecosystem services and on the network of
Infrastrutture Verdi (green infrastructures, nature based solutions), defined
to achieve specific objectives of social, environmental, financial and
work-related order”.
Therefore,
the numerous environmentalits, worried about the valorization of urban green in
the post – emergency Covid phases, seem to have an answer. Many associations
indeed had signed the Manifesto per la difesa
del verde in ambito urbano in Italia nel dopo Covid-19,
launching an appeal to the highest State offices.