Green Belts and urban quality

Green Belts have always had an important role in containing urban growth and in improving the quality of the environment and of life. They have been used since years to prevent major cities to sprawl outwards the boundaries. They are used also to safeguard natural elements and landscape values by separating the compact urban form (the city core) from the rural countryside. In this perspective, during the last years, greenbelts have also been seen as a hybrid landscape which separates city and hinterland. Since their origin (in 1898 Ebenezer Howard developed the idea of Garden Cities which was later used in the city of London’s plan by Patrick Abercrombie), the concept of Green Belts has spread in various planning systems as a way to contain urban dispersion. In fact, Green Belts had strong impacts in different European cities beyond the ones in Great Britain (for example Berlin and Vienna); nevertheless, it has also been resumed and reinterpreted in some American cities, such as Chicago and the Seattle area. Originally seen as a tool to control further urban growth and to prevent the merge of urban and rural elements, nowadays they are acquiring importance also in the field of landscape and environmental planning. Since the 80s, with the birth of the concept of sustainable development (Brundtland report), Green Belts have ‘gained’ new functions, such as nature conservation and urban regeneration (with all the issue of brownfield development). This paper intends to present the evolution of this instrument in Italy with the explanation of study cases, focusing on the Green Belt of the city of Vercelli which was proposed to be introduced in the last urban plan (2007).