“Cambiamo Clima”, the podcast of Chora News and TEDxVarese, produced by Chora Media, presents the Parco Italia project with Maria Chiara Pastore, the project’s Research Coordinator.
Trees, shrubs and green spaces in the city have now turned into oases in a concrete desert, so that nature has become an out-of-town attraction to be planned- like vacations, points out Alice Pomiato, content creator and trainer on sustainability issues. As the population has increased, people have tried to get as much space as possible for housing, cars, and transportation, taking it away from trees. Stopping thinking of nature as something detached from our lives is the key to successfully addressing the challenges of climate change.
Maria Chiara Pastore, professor at the Politecnico di Milano and Research Coordinator of the Parco Italia project, has been dealing with the nature-city relationship for years. Today, Maria Chiara Pastore explains, we think of cities as separate and distinct parts: on one side parks and greenery, on the other side buildings and concrete. Instead, we need to think of them as integrated systems.
The process of re-bringing nature into cities has a specific term: urban forestry.
The Parco Italia project, conceived by Stefano Boeri, grew out of the first World Forum on Urban Forests, a sharing platform for researchers, arborists, scientists, citizens and institutions, and a conversation with Richard Weller, professor at PENN University and creator of the World Park – a global connection system between all biodiversity hotspots.
Parco Italia, developed by Stefano Boeri Architetti’s Research Department with the AlberItalia Foundation, envisions connecting the existing heritage of national and regional parks with mobility and walking systems, creating one large infrastructure along the entire peninsula.
Green corridors extending urban forestry to the 15 metropolitan areas with the Apennine ridge and Alpine system become the backbone of the system where nature and biodiversity enter the interior of cities in a structural way.
Among the activities of the research and implementation phase, the “afforestation priorities” map identifies areas to be planted first so that ecological corridors can be implemented.
For more information on the Parco Italia project: www.parcoitalia.it
To listen to the episode: https://choramedia.com/podcast/cambiamo-clima/