Abstract
The paper analyses the governance models of six peri-urban green infrastructures (GIs) in Europe to reflect on GIs as critical loci to operationalize the sometimes naïve and rhetorical aim of sustainable development. In the study, the case of “Corona Verde”, the green belt around the City of Turin (Italy), is compared with other peri-urban GIs to discuss the potential of territorial governance for the construction of objective-led deliberative arenas as promoted by the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. As a result, the hypothesis that peri-urban GIs are the most appropriate territorial systems to organise and manage a viable system of sustainability objectives is discussed and reframed. Although limited in scope and data, original traits of this study are the development of a territorial benchmarking comparing governance models rather than territories and the operationalisation of the governance for sustainability in terms of a continuous negotiation between the socio-ecological actors of a given territorial system.