PAYS.MED.URBAN: High quality of landscape as a key of sustainability and competitiveness of mediterranean urban areas
PAYS.MED.URBAN understands high quality of landscape as a key factor of sustainability and competitiveness of urban areas. High quality of landscape is not only important for the identity, the ecological health and the quality of life of urban areas but also is a key factor of the attractiveness and distinctiveness of these areas. For this reason, it is an territorial capital and soft locational factor important for attracting enterprises of the new economy sectors (knowledge industry business), qualified and creative workforce (“talents”) and for tourism. Therefore, PAYS.MED.URBAN links directly with general objectives for the Med programme (to make the whole Med space a territory able to match international concurrence and active intervention in a logic of sustainable development). Among priority axes the project belongs to axis 4 centred in the promotion of a polycentric development, putting the accent on the question that a polycentric spatial approach only can be sustainable when it is combined with the idea of compact city in order to prevent a dispersed polycentric settlement pattern caracterized by urban sprawl and the subsequent negative impacts or costs. The aim to create polycentric and at the same time compact urban regions needs a great attention to landscape, especially the preservation of open public spaces in the periurban areas, but also are important other landscape matters treated by PAYS.MED.URBAN.