Guiding the form, direction and speed of cities' growth involves making technological progress readily available for human and socially inclusive and harmonic projects that may build progressively balanced and sustainable relationships between the cities and the environment. Today, planning and managing the articulation among the various social activities that produce territories involve the need to think, invent and apply new technical developments related to the protection of biodiversity; management of hydric resources and risks; energy production, consumption and conservation; control and reduction of environmental erosion; processing of solid, liquid and gaseous waste; alternative systems for managing distances and planning mobility. But these technical developments are not enough. In order to guide transitions towards the ‘desirable' cities, these should also be carefully coordinated with (i) the invention, planning and realization of alternative, inclusive, non-fragmented urban and socio-territorial morphologies and (ii) the construction and strengthening of civic cultures that value the collective, shared and public dimensions of an urban life which is harmonious with the environment.
We invite and welcome the presentation of scientific papers related to this topic and analyses of local and regional experiences, addressing issues such as: