Peri-urban Conflicts and Environmental Challenges : A Mediterranean Perspective

Urban expansion and the preservation of fringe landscapes are clearly interconnected issues. This book discusses the relationship between landscape and peri-urban agriculture and the possible implications of sustainable land management for fringe land quality, proposing a framework to evaluate the latent nexus between agro-forest systems and human settlements in Southern Europe. Eco-sustainable planning integrated with multi-faceted policy actions (social, economic, cultural and political dimensions) is a relevant approach to reinforce sustainability of fringe landscapes. Permanent assessment of these factors allows for the implementation of different development scenarios. The present work definitely contributes to systemic and multi-scale approaches informing environmental policies, with the aim of achieving an integrated management of peri-urban agricultural landscapes.