Scienze del Territorio

The territory as a living being: plural ontologies, relationship policies and challenges for the territorial sciences. Editorial

Annalisa Giampino, Sergio Serra — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Rethinking nature with the paradigm of territorial care

Daniela Poli, Giulia Luciani — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Amid the intensifying ecological crisis and global warming, numerous theories have emerged that propose moving beyond the modern paradigm centred on the dichotomy between nature and humanity. The neoliberal approach has permeated many theoretical and operative frameworks within territorial sciences. It has produced rhetorical visions of nature grounded in themes of interconnection, while nevertheless promoting various forms of extractivist approaches. In response to the proliferation of “natural resource management” tools rooted in this vision – such as Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) – a debate has developed within the scientific community critical of neoliberalism, questioning whether or not to engage with mainstream instruments. This article addresses these issues from a territorialist perspective. It draws on concepts from the fund-flow model of bioeconomics and from studies on valuation and value attribution. The aim is to highlight both the need for, and the already existing practical relevance of, approaching nature as a “dialogic otherness,” grounded in a paradigm of territorial care.

Evolution and autopoiesis: narrative strategies and heuristic devices in territorial description

Giampiero Lombardini, Andrea Vergano — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

This paper develops a reflection on certain biological metaphors that, over time and with varying degrees of effectiveness, have entered urban and territorial sciences. Along this trajectory, which unfolds in parallel with the emergence of biology, some concepts have assumed, at different historical moments, a strong normative and prefigurative role in shaping projects of city and territory. These are the concepts of evolution and autopoiesis. While evolution has long occupied a central place in modern thought, often through simplifications and instrumental uses that have distorted its scientific meaning, autopoiesis emerged only in the last decades of the twentieth century, contributing to a redefinition of paradigms that had appeared consolidated in the study of living systems. The paper focuses on two moments in which biological language was employed not only to establish new connections between natural sciences and territorial sciences, but also to overcome some constitutive dichotomies of modern thought. The first examines the influence of evolutionary theory, understood as a narrative strategy, on the study of urban and regional phenomena at the beginning of 1900. The second reflects on the concept of autopoiesis, understood as a heuristic device, and its implications for the study of social, urban and territorial organisations.

Relationality, co-evolution and new ecosophies in the socio-ecological territorial project

Giovanni Ottaviano — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

In the relationship between human societies and the environment, dualistic frameworks often persist, reinforcing the subordination of the latter to the former. Within the ongoing transition toward so-called “ecologically oriented” economic and social models - at least in their stated intentions - demiurgic approaches to the human–nonhuman relationship emerge. These are manifested in nostalgic tensions and aestheticizations of nature, ecological neocolonialisms, elitist appropriations of environmental values, the subjugation of environmental elements and processes to dominant economic models, and their incorporation into financial markets. Such approaches tend to reproduce - even if in different forms - the same value-extractive logics that have historically depleted territories through modernization processes, ultimately proving ineffective in addressing the pressing environmental issues of our time. Reasserting the role of the human-nonhuman relational continuum as a fundamental dimension of the reproduction of the living environment implies, in the field of territorial planning, the development of tools that enable the reconstruction of virtuous co-evolutionary processes among territorial agents, also through negentropic practices and the care of renewed social-ecological systems.

Beyond the techno-reductionism of nature: potential of the concepts of metabolism and biomimicry

Nicola Valentino Canessa, Giorgia Tucci — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

From a territorialist perspective, the territory is understood to be a highly complex living organism resulting from long-term co-evolutionary processes between humans and nature. It is also considered to be a subject that reacts to external disturbances through internal adaptation processes. As an evolving organism, the territory is characterised by its specific adaptive metabolism, the symbiotic result of natural and anthropogenic metabolic cycles. While nature is often viewed as a mere resource reserve within an anthropocentric and neoliberal framework, it is precisely in the delicate yet pivotal relationship between natural and anthropogenic cycles of extraction, production and consumption that we can envisage transcending a technocratic perspective on nature, which frequently results in eco-catastrophic consequences. This allows us to strive for a virtuous and generative equilibrium between humans and nature. The concept of urban-territorial metabolism has long been used as a metaphor, producing technocratic approaches that reduce nature to an economic factor, as well as eco-sustainable visions based on resource sharing and conviviality. This contribution explores the metabolic-biomimetic paradigm as a theoretical and operational device for ecological transition. It promotes a reformulation of urban planning knowledge in ecological terms that can orient design towards models of regenerative and resilient territorial development.

Territory as a dimension of mutuality: spaces of co-belonging beyond the human/non-human dualism

Filippo Schilleci, Alessio Floris — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

With the advent of modernity, human control over nature has progressively transformed the concept of territory from a ‘living being’ into a market asset, converting its generative qualities into tradable attributes. This transition exemplifies an extractive logic in which nature’s value is reduced to profitability metrics and converted into financial rent through technocratic processes. The deconstruction of the anthropocentric paradigm, founded on the dichotomy between human and non‑human, therefore emerges as an essential prerequisite for rethinking governance models capable of transcending purely technical-procedural approaches. The study aims to identify conceptual frameworks to guide the formulation of eco‑territorial governance models founded on reciprocity and driven by co‑evolutionary dynamics. These models aim to guide a reconfiguration of socio‑ecological relations beyond traditional extractive logics. Adopting a critical lens, the study redefines the concept of territory as a space of mutual belonging. It undertakes a comparative analysis of the pathways of Sa Tramuda in Sardinia and the network of Trazzere in Sicily, proposing an interpretive framework that transcends the human/non‑human dualism. It presents models that highlight the interdependence between communities and territory, emphasising its role as a dynamic entity shaped by historical layers, cultural practices and ecosystem connections, rather than merely its tangible dimension.

Beyond the dichotomies of modernity. Forms of intersubjectivity as a critical attitude towards the future of territories

Anna Maria Colavitti, Stefania Crobe — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

In an effort to transcend the modern dichotomy between nature and culture, this contribution advances an ecosophical and relational perspective as a critical posture within territorial sciences. Tracing the genealogy of the concept of nature and the Promethean myth, it demonstrates how capitalist development and the ideology of progress have produced rifts among human settlements, environments, and productive activities, undermining both natural and cultural biodiversity. Internaturalism is presented as a principle of intersubjectivity between humans and non-humans, oriented toward practices of care, coexistence, and ecological stewardship. Through tangible cases, such as Lake Gusana, the text explores collaborative and co-management efforts, emphasizing the potential redefinition of instruments and the inherent ambivalences these alliances may involve.

Land stewardship: Spanish experiences in cultural heritage restoration

Giorgia Dato — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

Land stewardship is a public-social strategy born in the late 19th century in the United States for the conservation of natural resources and, over time, has spread to various countries around the world. Particularly in Spain, land stewardship is establishing as a strategy to conserve and manage different spaces not exclusively linked to natural resources but also closely connected to cultural and landscape values. The analysis of some Spanish experiences shows how land stewardship is a particularly useful social initiative also for the recovery of cultural heritage by promoting a territorial vision centered on the concept of heritage-common good and an approach to biocultural landscapes that offer a multidimensional understanding.

The least common multiple

Luciano De Bonis — Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0100

In order not only to highlight the profound significance of Magnaghi’s established contribution to urban planning, but also to uncover the promising potential of his work for future developments in transdisciplinary, ‘territorial’ research, this contribution integrates a markedly self-governmental interpretation of Magnaghi's ‘minimal bioregional units’ with the possible identification of his pact-based planning tools as Ostromian institutions of collective action. In this way, the paper also highlights the opportunity to move beyond the Darwinian view of fundamental evolutionary units as conspecific wholes in territorial planning practices, in favor of their ‘cybernetic’ (Batesonian) reconceptualization as interspecific coevolutionary complexes.