The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was established by the European Community in the 1950s to provide financial support to farmers in member states, increase agricultural productivity by promoting technical progress, and ensure a fair standard of living for farmers. Over time; awareness about the externalities of intensive farming would prompt environmentally friendly practices. These include, in the current programming period 2014–2020, the so-called “greening”, which consists of: (i) crop diversification; (ii) the maintenance of permanent grassland surfaces; and (iii) the availability of 5% of arable land for ecological focus areas devoted to agricultural practices beneficial for the climate and the environment. These provisions, spurred by a decades-long debate that also stresses the importance of creating/restoring ecological connectivity on different scales to counter land fragmentation, are in tune with spatial planning initiatives throughout Europe. Here the point is how to combine these directions with either “ecological networks” (EN), designed as physical corridors to be preserved and enhanced for plants and animals’ mobility needs; or “green infrastructure” (GI), defined on the European level as a “strategically planned network of natural and semi-natural areas with other environmental features designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services” (European Commission; 2013). While in several European countries environmental measures targeting farmers and ecological networks directed at specific areas have been merged in a place-based approach, Italy is lagging behind. In general, no guidelines have been provided on the national level to support regional paths, while regions and municipalities lack the resources to implement GI. Conversely, while greening policies in the framework of the CAP are properly funded, they lack directions to be efficiently allocated. Against the backdrop of such concerns, this paper frames and reflects upon ongoing practices in three pilot areas in different Italian regions, selected based on desk analysis, in-depth interviews, and direct knowledge. Here, despite or thanks to the legislative framework, experimental approaches have been adopted to harness performance issues in targeted areas through broad participation by public and private stakeholders and multilevel governance schemes, opening possible pathways in view of the forthcoming programming period.

The main challenges faced by Europe for 2030 concern the achievement of 30% of protected marine surfaces, the improvement of connections between marine protected areas (MPAs), and especially, their more efficient management. The governance of MPAs is therefore called upon to strengthen its objectives, becoming part of a wider network of actors in dialogue with economic counterparts, addressing manifold interference and impacts, and ultimately strengthening biodiversity protection. This work explores the local dimension of MPAs’ governance through the opportunities offered by the Interreg MED TUNE UP project “Promoting multilevel governance for tuning up biodiversity protection in marine areas” (2019–2022), which commits to enhancing the effectiveness of MPAs in the Mediterranean, through the implementation of Environmental Contracts. Based on this experience, a two-fold analysis of multiple case studies has been developed, considering both the local and the European scale of regulations and governance chains. The results show that the MPA Contract is an effective tool to improve the governance of European MPAs and thus tackle the local responses to EU and national protection policies through a process of vertical and horizontal subsidiarity. The need for an interinstitutional dialogue to address the establishment of effective environmental governance and the enforcement of regulations affecting marine areas has been highlighted.

Since approximately 75% of Europeans currently live in cities, and this number will rise, urban areas are the most important testbeds for energy transition, climate change adaptation measures, and decarbonisation models, on which studies and efforts for concrete change must focus. The teaching of mitigation and adaptation measures to climate change and decarbonisation models has gradually taken up space within university courses. However, the complexity of the decarbonisation issue is raising awareness on the urgency of an interdisciplinary approach that can be conveyed by spatial planning. Currently, this approach is not widespread in Higher Education Institutions in Europe but is nonetheless necessary to let new professional profiles emerge who are able to coordinate different stakeholders, data, and information sources. The Erasmus+ project CITY MINDED (2020–2022) has worked in this direction, by developing and testing a methodology for the design of a structured ordinary practice for teaching urban decarbonisation to students in Higher Education. This practice (at the same time, interdisciplinary, collaborative, experiential, and place-based) aims to offer students a combination of different approaches and working methods to investigate and improve urban neighbourhoods and districts, resulting in the definition of an operative roadmap for decarbonisation in the medium-to-long-term. The aim of this article is to highlight the learning-by-doing experience developed by the project consortium, with reference to the testing of the methodology conducted within an Intensive Course in the City of Valletta (Malta). In particular, the paper illustrates how this experience succeeded in stimulating students with different academic backgrounds to establish connections across disciplines, in raising their awareness about the complexity of city decarbonisation processes. Overcoming the strict time and budget constraints of an EU-funded project, such an approach can be further developed, replicated on theoretical grounds, and implemented within different degree programmes dealing with urban sustainability.

Traditional agricultural practice and peculiar geographical features in the Mediterranean basin have not only moulded cultural and heritage values, but also created the conditions for the development of habitats to be protected. Therefore, Landscape proves a suitable concept both for the enhancement of cultural features and for nature conservation. The aim of this work is to apply the landscape approach to the Pantelleria National Park, providing the opportunity to reflect upon and discuss whether and how to encompass rural landscape planning and management within the broader context of natural values, offering a frame of reference for the zoning of the future Park Plan. Specifically, the research aims to define zoning categories, typical to protected areas planning, using criteria related to landscape features and patterns, environmental quality, traditional agriculture, architectural heritage. Established in 2016, the Pantelleria National Park is the most recent Italian National Park and the first one in Sicily. The Park covers 79% of the island, encompassing two sites of Community Importance as well as one Special Protection Area belonging to the Natura 2000 network. Pantelleria is a microcosm gathering a great variety of natural and human-made landscapes characterized by high levels of complexity embodying the antagonism of two protected ‘noble interests’: Nature and the environment on the one hand, Culture framed as traditional rural practices on the other. The main challenge of the new-founded National Park is to combine quality and values relating to the domain of Nature, which is expanding, with those expressed by Culture, represented by a wide array of historical rural values at risk due to ongoing abandonment of most remote areas.

I processi di rigenerazione urbana restano, talvolta, legati ad interventi migliorativi a livello energetico e sismico dei singoli edifici. Tali pratiche appaiono ancora poco efficaci sulla rifun-zionalizzazione degli spazi pubblici "in attesa", sull'inclusione sociale e sulla costruzione di relazioni e di reti a livello territoriale. La Francia, negli ultimi quindici anni, ha avviato progetti di Urbanisme Transitoire intesi come facilitatori per lo sviluppo delle città e dell'identità loca-le. Tale approccio, contando su programmi pluriennali a progressiva implementazione e di mixité funzionale, sostiene la nascita di comunità collaborative in ambienti di condivisione estremamente flessibili e ricchi di offerta culturale e creativa. Se opportunamente declinate, le potenzialità del modello francese genererebbero, anche in Italia, progettualità in grado di inno-vare ambiti urbani con bassa qualità dell'abitare e scarsa coesione sociale.