The Notion of Green Heritage and Integrated Programs of Sustainable Urban Regeneration: The Interplay Between General/Public and Individual Interests

This chapter aims to make a preliminary conceptual cleaning up of the elusive notion of “green heritage” as scattered throughout normative texts (supranational, constitutional, state, regional, and local) that use it for different purposes (urbanistic, aesthetic, cultural, social, historical, of identity). The introduction in Article 9 of the Italian Constitution of the principles of environmental protection, biodiversity, and ecosystems has brought about a paradigm shift according to a twofold order of reasons: the first due to their inclusion among the fundamental principles, which gives them the power to conform the contents of the legislative, regulatory and administrative function, and the second related to their being aimed at the protection of future generations. In this scenario, the issue of the enhancement and redevelopment of urban green spaces is addressed not only from the perspective of the ecological transition initiated by international (UN Agenda 2030) and European (European Green Deal and Next Generation EU) law but also as an effective guarantee of the individual’s right to live in healthy and sustainable urban settings. Pandemic and post-pandemic experience has recorded the beneficial effects that the relationship with green areas can produce on the psychophysical well-being of citizens. The current energy and climate crisis highlights the instrumentality of green spaces to decarbonization goals. Within this framework, the new integrated urban and environmental regeneration programs/interventions will be examined. These, overcoming the previous sectorial connotation of land-government policies, are marked by a holistic dimension capable of developing a new administrative function of urban regeneration, aimed at the simultaneous protection of general (ecosystems, biodiversity) and individual (health, psychophysical well-being), as well as material (redevelopment, enhancement, fruition) and intangible (cultural, educational) interests. The essay also aims to analyze a number of public and private urban green redevelopment projects that stimulate an effort to adjust the anachronistic category of public property toward a more up-to-date notion of urban green heritage.