Med.Net AgroCities: proactive role in the Mediterranean system

During the last decades, the evolution of the urban-territorial city produced a combination of issues about the City-Nature and City-Nature-Landscape relation, such as the change of perspective between the urban, physical and social dimension and the agricultural-landscape system and agricultural- environmental system in the context within which the city redefines and develops itself. This change of perspective stabilized and manifested itself with the increasing awareness that agricultural and forestry spaces must develop a plural, structural, articulate and functional role; a role within which various forms of knowledge and regulations, various norms and sections of public policies are combined. To overcoming the opposition city-country, within which the suburban areas play a vital role - producing and creating function of complex value - a new model of integrated approach towards territorial policies and the geo-urban project is needed; a model able to adequately represents the different applications within the territory, specially in the middle or proto-metropolitan cities on the Mediterranean (Med-Net AgroCities) where the combination Heritage-Tourism-Agriculture-Environment is absolutely crucial but not always well developed in the sense of integrated systems or holistic gazes. This kind of approach focus on a matter that, from the planning point of view appears unavoidable and that refers to the need of integration between territorial and political planning and rural development plans that combine primary/tertiary activities and agricultural production. In this framework, the contribution wants to explore and to analyse the Med-Net AgroCities, with a transdisciplinary, transversal and integrated approach, presenting the theme through the theoretical and active experiences of the GicLab team.