Governing land and urban change: the approaches

Abstract The paper asserts that each new urban and land planning approach, (ranging from the environment assessment procedures and land suitability analysis introduced in the past, to the newer methods of resilience and urban metabolism) should be considered as useful support tools for the territorial government, but none of them in itself is sufficient to overcome the main issues that had a negative influence on the effectiveness of planning, and that contributed to the disrepute of the comprehensive planning tools. To safeguard the environmental resources it is necessary to assure a programmatic continuity of the political choices at different levels, both public and institutional, and of the private–public relations, nowadays overbalanced because of the generalized use of urban equal distribution construction rights and because of planning agreements on varying comprehensive plan, often without any justifiable reasons. To disentangle through the networks that connects the construction sector’s interests and the expectations of urban and financial performances, it is necessary to develop new approaches and comprehensive planning tools able to involve townspeople and to share the aims of the comprehensive planning it self. It is necessary to acknowledge the ineluctability of bonds and precepts that seems to be forgotten in the present time, like owning public properties and public areas to be destined to urban services and ecological areas with regenerative qualities.