Sara Favargiotti

• Ph.D. in Landscape and Architecture (Doctor Europaeus)
• Associate Professor at University of Trento

In Italy, the fragile territories addressed by the National Strategy on Inner Areas (SNAI), despite their geographical marginalization and demographic decline, are lately experiencing a growing momentum. Currently lacking successful policies for effective transformations, the adoption of a sustainable design-driven approach is necessary in order no...

Logistics, distribution models, and landscapes of food production strongly influence the space of our cities and territories. In addition to the network of large-scale retail distribution that is diffused in urban and non-urban areas, with this contribution, we study the presence of new forms of the local and sustainable distribution of food (such...

Bioclimatic design aims to create environmentally harmonious structures by integrating with local climate. This approach relies on passive and active strategies for sustainability, emphasising factors like proper orientation, natural light utilisation, and understanding solar movement. Sun charts assist in analysing the sun's path, crucial for arch...

In the last decades, rapid urban development led to the birth of informal working-class neighbourhoods. This phenomenon refers particularly to big cities of the developing world, where the slum’s expansion is uncontrolled and has caused a lack of basic services, drinking water and adequate sanitation facilities, generating open sewers, pollution an...

This contribution addresses, on one hand, the increasing need and demand of 3D data (e.g., point clouds) in urban forestry – for monitoring, analysis, and visualisation purposes –, on the other, the lack of standardised procedures to manage them, also towards engaging and empowering the broader audience. Practitioners in landscape architecture – as...

Urban forests, parks, and gardens are fundamental components of urban sustainability, resilience, and regenerative dynamics. Designers, architects, and landscape architects could smartly manage these dynamic ecosystems if efficiently provided with design-oriented digital tools, technologies , and techniques. However, practitioners lack knowledge an...

Areas suffering territorial imbalances are at risk, as climate change and inherent social-spatial vulnerabilities bring uncertainty over their capacity to achieve sustainable development. To enable policy-makers' vision for them, the paper proposes adopting digitally-enhanced disaster risk reduction practices which promote civic engagement and evid...

Nowadays, the urban design, planning and environmental management of areas suffering territorial imbalances require exploiting the ever-increasing availability of data about the natural and built environments, while promoting stakeholder engagement and empowering local communities. In the framework of an ongoing doctoral thesis, this paper contribu...

Nowadays, the urban design, planning and environmental management of areas suffering territorial imbalances (namely the “peripheral”, “marginal” and “inner” areas) require exploiting the ever-increasing availability of real-time data about the natural and built environments, while promoting stakeholder engagement and empowering local communities, t...

La transición energética y el paisaje se consideran a menudo contrapuestos, debido a las transformaciones sobre los paisajes cotidianos que se acometen para alcanzar los objetivos energéticos. El paisaje, entendido como relación profunda entre las personas y su medio, debe ser una cuestión clave a tener en cuenta durante la transición energética, y...

Cities are responsible for about 75% of the global greenhouse gas emissions. Various materials and energy sources, which are mostly produced by the rural areas rather than the cities, are consumed by the cities, and their waste is released back into the rural areas, thereby causing evident environmental damages. The Rural–Urban Metabolism approach...

The contexts addressed by the Italian National Strategy for Inner Areas (SNAI) often lack successful regional policies and systemic territorial approaches to achieve effective transformations towards resilient territories. These issues are addressed by the ongoing project "B4R Branding4Re-silience." This contribution aims to present and discuss its...

This article analyzes inner and marginal territories in four Italian peripheral contexts by first discussing some of the results and future steps of the “B4R Branding4Resilience” research project, funded by the Italian Ministry of Research from 2020 to 2023. The overall research is based on three phases: (1) the exploration phase to analyze socio-e...

The effects of soil sealing on the hydrological cycle and water resource exploitation are critical issues for the sustainable development of urbanised areas. Cities’ growth without adequate measures for mitigating anthropic impact has led to deep changes in the hydrological balance regime. In a climate change scenario, the expected increase of rain...

Crossing the Italian inner territories offers the opportunity to describe no longer their marginali- ty, but to narrate their human and natural resources and, among many, the water: this journey through the Italian thermal landscapes aims to unveil how the landscape is a collective good to be protected, but also a unique opportunity for territorial...

Urban green infrastructure (UGI) has a key role in improving human and environmental health in cities and contributes to several services related to climate adaptation. Accurate localization and quantification of pervious surfaces and canopy cover are envisaged to implement UGI, address sustainable spatial planning, and include adaptation and mitig...

This contribution aims to describe commons practices in marginal landscapes from the perspective of the design disciplines – landscape and urban design and architecture – as special collective forms of transfer of tangible and intangible values. Case studies in the Alps and Apennine context support the analysis. Specifically the paper investigates...

Inner territories are a central issue that is being discussed all over Europe. More than 60% of the European population live in peripheral contexts outside of main urban conurbations. Yet, the contexts addressed by the Italian National Strategy on Inner Areas – covering approximately the 60% of Italy and hosting nearly 13.5 million people – are oft...

Circa il 58% della popolazione europea vive e lavora in “aree rurali” e in “aree periferiche” che sono rispettivamente considerate come “aree scarsamente popolate” e “aree a densità intermedia” (Eurostat, 2020). Per contesti rurali intendiamo quelle aree che presentano condizioni di perifericità e/o fragilità, per lo più caratterizzate dalla produz...

Extreme industrialization and globalization have turned cities into the most voracious consumers of materials and they are overwhelmingly the source of carbon emissions through both direct and embodied energy consumption. Newly created cities and the urbanization process in rural areas replicate a lifestyle based on consumerism and the linear econo...

In recent years, attention has grown on the importance of the food heritage-related themes within landscape, cultural and social dynamics. This paper presents a theoretical introduction explaining the concept of foodscape as an integrated system of ecological network, connected to the role of local food production for the recovery of abandoned area...

In response to the global challenges brought on by climate change, cities around the world are adapting, innovating through nature-based strategies for sustainable development. Climate adaptation requires new interdisciplinary approaches in which different disciplines as well as research and practice proactively co-create and collaborate on adaptat...

Cities and urban areas have an essential role in contributing to sustainable development, as highlighted in the New Urban Agenda and in the Paris Agreement. To this end, experts and municipalities have been setting green and low carbon agendas to transform the built environment and promoting measures to make cities resilient and inclusive. Although...

Since the publication of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), the global interest for “ecosystem services” has rapidly grown in scientific studies and policy makers’ agenda [...]

Cities have a key role in tackling the challenges related to climate change and they constitute an ideal framework to engage with low carbon and green agendas, and to transform the built environment with resilient and inclusive measures. In this paper, the relationship between adaptation and mitigation strategies has been investigated, to evaluate...

Contemporary food systems face several paradoxes regarding equity and sustainability. Considering food production—an issue that simultaneously affects both the supply (production) and demand (consumption) sides—several cities have begun to implement new strategies, called Urban Food Policies. These approaches aim to address the various challenges p...

The landscape has been described as a 'blind spot' when examined in light of regional strategies. The immense potential of peri-urban and rural hinterlands to counter the climate emergency is therefore also overlooked. The European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT)Climate-KIC's (Knowledge and Innovation Community) System and sustainable...

One of the key issues of the contemporary city is “urban voids”, characterized by disused buildings. Such spaces can be the starting point for a new urban setting, where the city reconnects to the rural environment. Vertical farming can be a new paradigm connecting these often-opposed concepts, bringing several advantages. This paper presents an ex...

Over the past century, the world has built thousands of airports and airfields, which has had a significant impact on the landscape. Given the history of the rapid growth of air travel, but also due to the expansion of cities, many airports have become obsolete. Many have been abandoned, either because they are too small, in the wrong place, or bec...

R.E.D.S. Cloud is an international network of universities that since 2013 has been organizing conferences for the promotion and implementation of landscape and ecological urbanism within academia. The present volume is mainly a collection of essays submitted by more that sixty authors who responded to the call for papers for the third R.E.D.S. con...

What do huge flocks of sheep, hundreds of rabbits, business parks, metropolitan parks, leisure parks, high-tech parks have in common with airports? These are the most frequent visitors to airports recently constructed. These are the new ways of inhabiting an airport and connecting it to its context. The book presents the transformation of obsolete...

After a short examination of the most diffused "RE-words" in the scientific debate of the last years – and of their respective hints of meaning – the paper discusses an interpretation of the present time as a "RE-époque" (with an implicit assonance to the "Belle-époque" period). The intepretation is captivating, since it establishes a parallel with...

A new urbanity has been gradually defined by new environmental and landscape qualities with a higher respect and consideration of local territories and identities. New temporal regimes have been identified by new work life and social attitudes. The scarcity of non-renewable energy, economic change and new lifestyles enhanced a more conscientious ec...