ABSTRACT
Environmental decay, unchecked town planning, and pollution over vast areas, have pointed with increasing urgency to the need for a new planning philosophy and methodology that will give due consideration — as objectively as possible — to environmental and land resources. Land use planning has traditionally overlooked the importance of conservation with respect to the more productive agricultural estates. The chapter shows that the adoption of a careful, thorough, transparent land use selection procedure is the very first step towards the effective management of territorial resources. Agricultural productivity, forest productivity, wildlife productivity, and groundwater are, classically, flow resources; visual amenity is characterized both as a stock and as a flow resource; sand and gravel are stock resources. The “Metropolitan Landscape Planning Model” ascribes a crucially important role to groundwater resource assessment. The assessment stage summarizes the results of the following operational steps: landscape assessment, ecological compatibility assessment, and public service resource assessment.
