Towards the Integration of Soil Desealing in the Urban Areas’ Transformation Processes

Towards the European Commission “2050 no net land take” goal, many European policies recall the need to consider soil desealing measures in urban planning instruments. Within the context of increasing soil permeability and reducing its imperviousness, the term soil desealing – also referred to as soil unsealing or depaving – has been used in the scientific literature since the 1990s, when the concept started to acquire an individual relevance instead of being a consequence of urban or fluvial regeneration processes. Nonetheless, a unique comprehensive definition of soil desealing has yet to be provided, as well as a systematic implementation of desealing actions in urban transformation practices. This paper aims at identifying the role of desealing in urban planning and cities’ adaptation processes, as well aspects that need to be considered, in order to set a solid – but open – framework that lays the foundation for defining an approach to mainstream desealing practices in the urban regeneration processes and planning instruments. This study will provide an analysis of the existing literature, including a review of the existing soil desealing definitions, and outlining the recognized benefits and potential issues of these actions. Results show that cities and international entities, as well as the scientific community, are posing increasing attention to soil desealing, opening new scenarios for their implementation. Acknowledging the role of good spatial planning for more liveable cities, this contribution will present possible soil desealing implementation scenarios in urban planning tools.