Urban-rural linkages. Resilience, complexity, transition

The concept of urban-rural interfaces, in relation to the diffusion of human agglomerations and the fragmentation of agricultural spaces, represents a strategical research context of our current and future socio-spatial policy agendas, within cities and beyond their limits. In reality, the regionalization of urban process and this inter-urban scale of agglomeration serves as a driver of many territorial trends resulting not into an homogenous space, but more like a diverse territory shaped by many types of “land use relationships”. The consequences on the transformation of these territories concern the combination of important cognitive processes. Particularly in the hinterlands characterized by sprawl, are going to configure a complex pattern of undefined spaces developed on the preexisting agro-landscape structures, which are still the only weak frame of reference.