Landscape redevelopment as a tool fro the enhancement of rural areas. A project proposal for the case-study area of Padule di Bientina (Lucca - Italy)

Landscape is an extraordinary resource to read the past, the present and the future spatial organization of a territory. At the same time, landscape is a common good whose conservation, maintenance and enhancement are generally seen as a duty for local communities. According to the retro-innovation approach, a historic rural landscape can be a development engine for a territory when it is properly reinterpreted and redesigned on the basis of new local communities' needs. This should be done by preserving its primary function of food production while, at the same time, improving its ecological and environmental performance and strengthening (rather than losing) the kwowledge of the specifities of places. The retro-innovation approch had been the guide for a study carried out on the reclaimed plain of Padule di Bientina (LU), and in particular on a sub-area of 235 ha, cultivated with arable crops. This area shows evident signs of abandonment or inadequate management and, at the same time, it presents elements of naturalistics and environmental value and of historical-testimonial interest linked to the presence of traditional arrangements of the fields and drainage systems. The proposed project was developed as a masterplan of rural area re-organisation where the redevelopment aimed to answer a multiplicity of needs and to develop local vocations, able to ensure a balance among the productive role of agriculture, the naturalistic, environmental and ecological aspects, the historical landscape, the aesthetic-perceptive and the fruition of a territory