U2. Governance mixes for sustainable peri-urbanization: how can landscape ecology contribute?
Marcin Spyra (Martin-Luther University), marcin.spyra@geo.uni-halle.de
Silvia Ronchi (Polytechnic University of Milan)
Chiara Cortinovis (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Summary
Peri-urban landscapes (PULs) are often characterized by unsustainable development, conflicts, and fragmented governance, but they are also key places to address cross-scale issues such as water management, biodiversity conservation, and ecosystem service provision. In this session, we aim to investigate innovative governance mixes for PULs sustainability and to explore how the holistic approach of landscape ecology can contribute to them. We welcome both applicative cases and theoretical perspectives.
Description
Peri-urbanization processes involving urban expansion through land take and soil sealing are massive, often taking place beyond any regulations, threatening the performance of ecosystems and the provision of ecosystem services. These processes lead to the emerging of peri-urban landscapes (PULs), transition territories connecting cities with their surrounding environment, where urban, rural and natural or semi-natural characteristics are mixed. The governance of PULs faces multiple challenges: vertically and horizontally fragmented governance and planning, increasing pressure of market forces, speed of peri-urbanization processes, and lack of awareness about their potential consequences, among others. At the same time, it needs to address urban, regional and (cross-) national development goals such as air pollution reduction, integrated watershed management, infrastructure planning and management, biodiversity conservation, provision of and accessibility to ecosystem services.
Fostering sustainable development requires to overcome the numerous conflicts that characterize PULs and to approach them as interfaces where opportunities for governance experimentation and new governance mixes can emerge. Such new governance mixes do not refer to a particular type of governance or a simple combination of policy instruments but indicate a thoughtful mix of different, top-down and bottom-up governance approaches, introduced at different administrative levels, discussed and implemented by a wide range of governance actors, and bringing different formal and informal outcomes.
We hypothesise that a holistic landscape ecology approach can offer a transdisciplinary platform to develop innovative governance mixes towards sustainable PULs. However, several limitations and barriers are likely to emerge in such complex landscapes. To explore those barriers and the opportunities emerging in PULs, we encourage researchers and practitioners to present case studies, exemplary applications, theoretical frameworks and perspectives, as well as proposals of innovative governance processes, policy instruments, decision-support tools and methodologies, which contribute to addressing the following questions:
- What kind of governance mixes could increase the sustainability of existing and future PULs, and how?
- What is/can be the role of landscape ecology and landscape approaches when developing innovative governance mixes towards sustainable PULs?
- What are the good practices related to the successful implementation of governance mixes in PULs?
- What are the challenges and barriers for implementing governance mixes towards sustainable development in PULs?