Qualify decision making through strategic environmental assessment: advancing the resilience of peri-urban areas

The displacement between the intentions of the decision making process and the continuous changes that territories undergo, both planned and unforeseen, calls for an unused "territorial consistency" of planning. Thus, it requires to widen its capacity in taking into consideration the whole decision making means overlaying on concerned territories. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) can be a reliable support to this shift. Through the case study of joint SEA of the EU funded Regional Operational Programmes 2014-2020 in Lombardy Region (IT), the contribution argues the potential role of an assessment approach based on a wide, shared and territorial based sustainability framework, drawn in order to properly face dynamic spatial scenarios. It is shaped to accompany the decision-making process and ensure a long-term link between spatial changes and single planning or programming activity. To outline spatial scenarios, the whole factors supposed to determine the actual spatial dynamics are considered and conceived as directly impacting the resilience and the vulnerability of territorial systems. This space-based approach results in the acknowledgment of the value of peri-urban areas in terms of ecosystem services provided to urban areas as well as environmental, social and cultural relevance per se. While the urgent need for such role to be recognized is apparent, the lack of ad hoc policies in Italy stands evident, also due to an unwillingness to integrate sectorial courses of action within a territorial focus. The proposed case study delivers specific sustainability conditions for the implementation phase, in order to bridge single provisions on peri-urban areas.