The international debate on resilience has grown around the ability of a community to prepare for and adapt to natural disasters, with a growing interest in holistically understanding complex systems. Although the concept of resilience has been investigated from different perspectives, the lack of understanding of its conceptual comprehensive aspects presents strong limitations for spatial planning and for the adoption of policies and programs for its measurement and achievement. In this paper, we refer to “territorial resilience” as an emerging concept capable of aiding the decision-making process of identifying vulnerabilities and improving the transformation of socio-ecological and technological systems (SETSs). Here, we explore the epistemology of resilience, reviewing the origins and the evolution of this term, providing evidence on how this conceptual umbrella is used by different disciplines to tackle problem-solving that arises from disaster management and command-control practices to augment the robustness. Assuming the SETSs paradigm, the seismic and structural engineering, social sciences and history, urban planning and climatology perspectives intersects providing different analytical levels of resilience, including vulnerability and patrimony from a community and cultural perspective. We conclude that territorial resilience surpasses the analytical barriers between different disciplines, providing a useful concept related to complex problem-solving phenomena for land use planning, opening a new research question: how can territorial resilience be measured, acknowledging different units and levels of analysis aiding decision-making in spatial plans and projects? In attempting to understand a resilient system, quantitative and qualitative measurements are crucial to supporting planning decisions.

In the light of the current changing global scenarios, green infrastructure is obtaining increasing relevance in planning policies, especially due to its ecological, environmental and social components which contribute to pursuing sustainable and resilient planning and designing of cities and territories. The issue of green infrastructure is framed within the conceptual contexts of sustainability and resilience, which are described through the analysis of their common aspects and differences with a particular focus on planning elements. In particular, the paper uses two distinct case studies of green infrastructure as representative: the green infrastructure of the Region Languedoc-Roussillon in France and the one of the Province of Turin in Italy. The analysis of two case studies focuses on the evaluation process carried on about the social-ecological system and describes the methodologies and the social-ecological indicators used to define the green infrastructure network. We related these indicators to their possible contribution to the measurement of sustainability and resilience. The analysis of this relationship led us to outline some conclusive considerations on the complex role of the design of green infrastructure with reference to sustainability and resilience.

The paper develops a model through a contingent valuation approach to support public authorities in the exploration and assessment of ecosystem services (ESs) generated by forest and woodlands (FOWLs). This approach is employed to the cork oak forests of the Sardinia region (Italy) due to their ability in the provision and regulation of cultural and recreational values to society. The paper describes the economic valuation of cultural ESs through the contingent valuation method (CVM) with the purpose to explore residents and tourists’ willingness to pay (WTP) preferences towards conservation, valorisation, and the management of Goceano’s cork oak forests in Sardinia. The approach may help retain suitable support for DMs, planners, technicians, and operators for a better understanding of the ESs’ role in policy decisions, leading FOWLs towards a learning process between the environment, human beings, and landscape to promote and develop a proactive landscape and forest planning and management within the region.