Multiscalar challenges and proposals for the ecological design of urban and environmental systems

The ecological approach to the city has become a methodology at the basis of urban and environmental planning in the inter-nationaldebate on territorial governance. In the last thirty ye-ars, the building of green and blue infrastructures has been an analytial and urban design theme that guides the transformationof cities in a egeneratie and sustainable key. Green and blue infrastructures have the objectie of restoring and enhancing ecological natural networks in order to satify many functios that go beyond environmental issues as a tool for sustainable territorial development, providing ecosystem servi-ces to communities. In relationto the ecological design of cities,a wide range of benefitspotentiallyproduced by green networks are also consi-dered, from the safeguarding of biodiversity to the defense from hydraulic risk to the enhancement of rural fabrics and sustainable tourism up to the promotionof slow mobility. In many cases, gre-en infrastructures are also designed by looking at the benefitsfor human health. The theory of green-blue infrastructures is integrated with fur-ther approaches closely related to it, in the context of ecological design at diferent scales: Nature Based Solutionsand Ecosystem Services. These approaches share a consistent theoretical and operational background and integrate between themselves in or-der to define a methodology to support urban planning and design. The theoretial and operationalapproaches of NBS, GBI and ES belong to a wider fieldof research related to ecological planning and design: regeneratie thinking.