Artificial land use trends could represent an effective indicator of the settlement process quality and could also provide information about the efficacy of protection and exploitation policies in natural and rural areas. This work discusses an analytic procedure for the time series investigation of urban settlement development at the regional scale to verify the nexus between urban growth and demographic trends connected with the phenomenon of land take. In Italy, since 1950, the land take phenomenon has been a consequence of several factors: urbanization, realization of transport infrastructures including ports, airports, and highways, and the enhancement of industrial and productive systems. We analyzed all these territorial transformations that create waterproof soil, and more generally, a transition from natural and semi-natural uses toward artificial land use. After World War II, the demographic growth and the consequent housing demand generated a strong urbanization process in the main poles of economic development areas in Italy. Since the early 2000s, the situation has completely changed and the land take phenomenon is no longer mainly based on real need for new urban expansion areas based on effective urban planning tools, but is strongly related to a scattered demand for new housing in a weak territorial spatial planning system not able to drive effective urban development that minimizes speculative real estate initiatives. This uncontrolled occupation of soil generated, in Italy, a landscape fragmentation called the urban sprinkling phenomenon, different from urban sprawl, which is a wider phenomenon characterized by disordered urban growth. The present document aims to assess how uncontrolled expansion in areas characterized by low settlement density can generate fragmentation. To define if the territory is affected by the urban sprinkling phenomenon, two 50-year time series concerning urban expansion of buildings and demographic trends are analyzed calculating population and building density indices and their variation over the years. The sprinkling index is used to analyze the variation in the fragmentation degree at two different scales (regional and municipal). Finally, we discuss the context where this phenomenon has developed, analyzing the buildings located in hydrogeological risk zones and protected areas, and the correlation between demographic changes and the degree of territorial fragmentation variation.

Cycling is a climate-friendly, cost-effective, and greenhouse gas-efficient transport mode that produces relevant positive aspects to: urban innovation (new technology and services, that is, e-mobility and public bike-sharing systems), environment (reducing emissions, traffic congestion easing, increasing energy efficiency), public health (road safety, psycho-physical wellbeing, noise reduction), urban economy (infrastructure cost saving, low service and vehicle expenditures, energy saving, creation of sustainable green jobs), and inclusive society (improving inclusion of the local population, quality of life, wellbeing). Considering the 2014 Paris Declaration of the Transport, Health and Environment Pan-European Programme (THE PEP) for “the development of a pan-European Master Plan for cycling promotion,” it is necessary to implement support tools for urban planners and designers, who, simultaneously, provide a cognitive framework able to direct urban policymaking toward active mobility models/options and sustainable urban development processes. After highlighting the good practices of European cities related to the promotion of soft active mobility and modal split that contrast the use of private cars, this study presents a “morpho-syntactic” approach-based methodology apt at analyzing the city of Potenza (county seat of the Basilicata region, southern Italy) with the intention of producing a design scenario to develop urban cycling as an alternative urban development strategy. Geomorphological analysis-based techniques have been integrated with graph theory-based space–morphological analyses using the Space Syntax Analysis and the Place Syntax Analysis. The results obtained are useful to support a decision-making process for the development of an urban cycling infrastructure scheme that integrates Potenza's active transport infrastructures (mechanized pedestrian mobility) according to a multimodal approach. With the current national cycling supportive policy framework, local authorities are in a position to adopt strategies and actions aimed at promoting cycle-tourism and urban cycling, thus improving sustainable mobility policies as a component of urban planning.

The voluntary-based initiative Covenant of Mayors (CoM) focused on the active role of local authorities and increased its targets by 2016, through the Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans (SECAPs) in terms of GHG reduction from 20% to 40% by 2030. In actual fact, the SECAP, intended as an urban planning tool, has the potential to improve the resilience of the EU Municipalities to climate-change, developing adaptation/mitigation actions and increasing the ‘environmental awareness’ of the involved actors. From a planning point of view, we affirm that the CoM started a new season of urban planning in Europe that covers the planning demand in the domain of implementing sustainable territorial development objectives. It unlocks the current ineffective planning systems and represents a remarkable practice promoting feasible framework projects for public and private investments. This paper proposes a methodological proposal to exploit this spread of SECAPs in the EU, including the systemic strategic planning approach in the process of SECAP design and ensuring an integrated vision of city development over the list of actions per sector required by the Global CoM procedures. Besides the methodological proposal, a review of the major EU energy policies is provided and relevant Best Practices are presented.

The work is focused on the integration of space syntax analysis (SSA) in a process of participatory planning focused on a neighbourhood scale where the challenge of promoting pedestrian-friendly regeneration process is a bottom-up priority. The promotion of active mobility is one of the main themes of the urban regeneration project CAST operating on the western part of the city of Potenza (capital of the Basilicata region, Italy). Both the state of the art of the case study area and the potential effects of the intervention proposed on the basis of the participatory process have been assessed by SSA as a walkability assessment method. By measuring a street network’s syntactic parameters, it was possible to further enrich the cognitive framework relating to the current situation and to simultaneously evaluate the effects (in terms of potential movement and social usage) deriving from design interventions. The paper presents a methodology to evaluate the urban pedestrian environment and to provide an insight for walking-related intervention and improvements in neighbourhood-scale planning, according to a participatory approach. The research, based on specific local characteristics, represents a transferable approach to supporting and informing policy-makers and designers engaged in inclusive and participative urban regeneration projects.