Le infrastrutture verdi per la mitigazione e l'adattamento ai cambiamenti climatici

In recent years, various strategies have been developed based on conscious urban planning and the design of green spaces to increase the resilience of urban areas to climate change and to reduce the emissions of pollutants into the atmosphere. Green infrastructure is considered beneficial as it provides several ecosystem benefits, for example by restoring the water balance and improving thermal comfort in the built environment. This book analyzes the contribution that green infrastructure makes to climate change mitigation and adaptation. To this end, a framework of ecosystem services has been defined, in order to organize the evidence on biophysical benefits (e.g. carbon dioxide sequestration) and on social and psychological benefits (e.g. improved human health) that allow for coping (adaptation) and reducing (mitigation) the negative effects of climate change. The multifunctional and multi-scalar nature of green infrastructure makes the categorization of services complicated, as the interactions between the various benefits are multiple and on different scales. Therefore, the relevance of the green infrastructure benefits on three spatial scales (city, neighborhood, and intervention area) is shown. Furthermore, evidence on co-benefits (i.e. multiple benefits) and trade-offs (i.e. the most advantageous choices) between the various services is reported, showing how one benefit in turn can have negative effects on the achievement of other benefits. The manuscript identifies the paths to be pursued in further research concerning the role of green infrastructures for different cities morphologies, as climatic conditions and social contexts vary. Finally, this monograph reports the results of a competition aimed at collecting creative proposals which, in the context of the ecological transition of the built environment, aim at the redevelopment of Catania to reduce the hydrogeological risk and at the same time improve the architectural quality of the urban space, integrating the proposed solutions into the transportation system. In particular, the best three creative proposals are described and analyzed, which addressed issues of considerable complexity and importance for Catania, selecting areas with hydrogeological criticalities (Villaggio Santa Maria Goretti, Via Etnea and Piazza Borsellino and the Garibaldi-Nesima Hospital) and designing technical and technological solutions in line with the objectives of the Competition.