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Interdisciplinarity and governance in water landscapes

City, Territory and Architecture welcomes submissions to the thematic series - Interdisciplinarity and governance in water landscapes.

It is well known that territories characterized by an evident and structuring water presence, such as fluvial and coastal ones, are highly complex from different points of view: for the specificity of environmental dynamics and the entanglement between natural and anthropic dimensions; for the pressures and the conflicts of use that are present in limited and desirable settings for human activities, particularly impacting in such sensitive environments; for the landscape, cultural and economic values sedimented in the history that they represent; for the plurality of competencies involved in the management of both coastal and inland waters, in addition to more strictly territorial matters; for the specific environmental and landscape protection regimes to which they undergo to ensure safety and safeguarding of its features.
Consistently with the approach introduced by several international documents since the early 2000s (mainly European Water Directive 2000/60 EC and its derivatives, as well as the European Landscape Convention), the integrated administration with the involvement of populations in the recognition and management of environmental and landscape assets represent the cornerstone of a new generation of environmental and territorial policies. Among these, the negotiated and participated strategic planning tools, such as River, Lake and Coastal Contracts are introducing new collaborative modalities in the management processes of the water resource and its territory between territorial actors, both from institutions and local communities. Because of their aims and characteristics, the Contracts makes it possible to bring out the conflicts and contradictions of governance systems for the territory and its resources that are highly fragmented and sectorial, oriented by autonomous and divergent objectives.
The variety of aspects that need to be considered in in this type of governance tool, as well as the interdisciplinarity and integration required to pursue multi-objective and "win-win interventions", make it necessary to work within a multi-actor and multi-objective framework, which is precisely what integrated and collaborative planning is supposed to do; they also allow each disciplinary field to measure itself with the reasons of the other, thus producing significant theoretical and operational advances.
This thematic series intends to encourage contributions that, derived from different disciplinary approaches, can highlight the specificities, criticalities and conflicts in the management of these environments along with the potential and limitations of governance tools mentioned above to innovate environmental, landscape, land use policies and planning. The papers could deal with new approaches related to such covenant experiences or studies and researches on innovative and participated management of river or coastal territories, addressing relevant theoretical, methodological, operational and disciplinary or interdisciplinary issues.


Submission Deadline:  30 September 2022


Lead Guest Editor
Francesca Calace
Department of Civile Engineering Sciences and Architecture, Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy
email: francesca.calace@poliba.it

Guest Editor
Gert-Jan Burgers
CLUE+, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
email: g.l.m.burgers@vu.nl


Submission Instructions

The Special Issue is open to invited contributions only. The submission procedure will follow the submission guidelines provided by  City, Territory and Architecture. All submissions will undergo rigorous peer review and accepted articles will be published within the journal as a collection.

Submissions will also benefit from the usual advantages of open access publication:

Rapid publication: Online submission, electronic peer review and production make the process of publishing your article simple and efficient. 

High visibility and international readership in your field: Open access publication ensures high visibility and maximum exposure for your work - anyone with online access can read your article

No space constraints: Publishing online means unlimited space for figures, extensive data and video footage

Authors retain copyright, licensing the article under a Creative Commons license: articles can be freely redistributed and reused as long as the article is correctly attributed

For editorial enquiries please contact editorial@cityterritoryarchitecture.com.

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  1. This paper is a contribution to a special issue of “Interdisciplinarity and governance in water landscapes” with a critical reflection on the “Marta-Bolsena-Tarquinia” River, Lake, and Coast Contract research ...

    Authors: Sara Altamore and Daniela De Leo
    Citation: City, Territory and Architecture 2023 10:19