Landscape and Social Participation: The Umbrian Region’s Atlas of Objectives and the Trasimeno Lake Landscape Contract

Abstract

Within the principal resources useful for the next landscape models, people who live in their places represent the beginning and the final point of all the new possible regenerations paths: landscape is perceived by people, it is for people, and it is from people. The policymaker, whether intentionally or not, has a principal role in landscape construction. Reactivating the relationship that binds the community to its landscape is crucial to understand its meanings and to take action on it, and the representational tools can be useful in this regard to present, describe, and communicate the landscape, to involve citizens, and to support their participation. In this context, the research aims to introduce the Umbrian regional strategy of co-design applied for the integrated governance in the political and public sphere. The methodology presented intends to promote some models for the sustainable and democratic development of a social contract connected with environmental citizenship and the co-design approach. In this strategy of public and private partnership (PPP), academic research is fundamental to reach the standardization of the approaches for investigation and intervention, and the Atlas of Objectives produced represents a contemporary tool to bring out relationships and to define “routes” in compliance with the European guidelines, which are applied in some regional strategies. This guideline can be applied in the Landscape Contract, in particular, that of Lake Trasimeno, an agreement between citizens and the administration for territorial governance and cohesion policy. It starts from a well-structured cognitive framework and is finalized to the active government of the territory. The main goal is the involvement of both citizens and economic entities in joining in a strategy that aims to increase the sense of belonging. In that regard, it promotes the necessary social and cultural changes and makes more efficient the productivity in terms of sustainable development of a homogeneous territorial area. Particular case studies and strategies are detailed to explain the potential impact for landscape planning of the instruments developed. The approach in the topic of representation is central to synthesize the knowledge and to reinforce its value, sharing with the citizens and involving them.