Food-system planning is a planning approach focused on the elements that are directly or indirectly involved in food production, including the effects of these processes on territories and cities. A strategy for protecting peri-urban green areas aligned with the food-system planning approach is being adopted in the metropolitan area of Milan, in Parco delle Risaie. This article outlines the planning process underlying the establishment of Parco delle Risaie, where peri-urban space protection strategies have been integrated with food-system planning strategies, such as the creation of a local food chain and the promotion of multifunctional farming activities.

This contribution provides theoretical and operational hints for reframing current approach and tools to counterbalance climate change, aiming to better guide planners and decision makers in building up effective climate sensitive urban development processes. To achieve this goal, we will firstly explore commonalities and peculiarities of three Urban Metaphors - Smart City, Resilient City and Transition Towns – that are gaining an increasing attention by planners and decision-makers, to better understand their roles in supporting climate strategies, their potential synergies and conflicting aspects, and above all their potential in promoting integrated approaches to climate issues. Then, based on a comparison among different case studies within and outside Europe, we will highlight strengths and weaknesses of current institutional-led initiatives as well as ‘transition’ practices (community-led) addressed to deal with climate change at local scale. In detail, strengths and weaknesses of current practices will be presented according to different research questions: if and how the three considered urban metaphors (Smart City, Resilient City, Transition Towns) effectively frame current practices; current level of integration among mitigation and adaptation practices; mainstreaming of mitigation and adaptation practices into urban planning processes; emerging governance models and, above all, factors currently hindering the paths towards effective climate policies in cities. Finally, based on the lessons learnt from both theoretical debate and current practices, some key principles to reframe current approaches to climate issues and to overcome barriers and criticalities hindering effectiveness of current strategies and measures, will be provided. These key principles will be mainly addressed to promote cross-sectorial strategies and measures to counterbalance climate change; to enhance the capacity to take into account synergies and trade-offs between mitigation and adaptation strategies and measures; and to promote the mutual capacitation and contamination among different actors and stakeholders.

The paper is rooted in the results of the Resilience Practices Observatory (RPO) project, which engaged more than one hundred community-led practices to improve local resilience capacities and about fifty applied research and institutional-led initiatives. The article in retracing the complex and articulated RPO research-action project aims to stimulate the disciplinary debate on the contribution and role of resilience practices in a renewed landscape planning framework process. In particular, the paper focuses on the resilience practices acting on ecological landscape enhancement, assuming nature-based solutions as an umbrella concept under numerous approaches, models, and theoretical frameworks supporting the integration of ecological values in the territorial and urban transformation towards their conservation and improvement. The selected cases are placed in the Milano metropolitan area, aiming to safeguard, improve, and valorize urban and periurban landscapes. The cases are used to explore three emerging phenomena: (1) the alliances and the role of community in orienting landscape planning; (2) the role of practices in solution co-design and planning implementation; (3) the role of community in micro-intervention for urban biodiversity and landscape functionality. The final section emphasizes the potential role of community-led initiatives in implementing the NBS European policy and landscape planning guidelines. In the meantime, final remarks underline perspectives in overcoming the existing criticalities towards renovated and adaptive governance process, enabling a more collaborative arena supporting the engagement of differentiated actors along the whole process, from decision making to the implementation and management of landscape planning.

The paper aims to present as an organic structure the outcomes from various pieces of research and consulting activities developed over the last few years (2011-2015). Shared topics are: urban-rural partnerships, food planning, metropolitan polices and the territorial resilience of periurban areas. In the first part (the core of the paper) the paper underlines critical questions and establishes needs so as to move towards a new approach to development processes in periurban areas. The paper uses some key concepts to present the main outcomes: 1. Understanding complexity (multiscales in space) and dynamics (multiscales in time); 2. Identifying all the resources and opportunities; 3. Crosscutting and multi-issues. In the second part (in the final part) the paper proposes the “Ecotone” metaphor to support innovation in the approach to periurban areas. It is a “zone of transition between adjacent ecological systems, having a set of characteristics uniquely defined by space and time scales and by the strength of the interactions between adjacent ecological systems” (Hansen et al, 1992). In these terms, periurban areas may be assumed to be ecotonal zones of transition between urban and rural or natural systems. Using the concept of “ecotonal buffer of transition” to approach the periurban systems it is possible to connect main needs and critical questions underlined to a homogeneous framework and to emphasise on the strategic role that the peri-urban systems play for the future development of metropolitan regions oriented to a improvement of resilience of socio-ecosystems. In the final part the paper focuses on the governace of urban rural partnerships and research perspectives.