Thesis title: Urban Forestry — Integrated and Sustainable Planning
This study reinterprets urban forestry in Rome as an integrated and sustainable landscape planning framework, rooted in the city’s layered heritage and evolving socio-ecological conditions. Rather than viewing greenery as a residual amenity or technical environmental measure, the research positions the urban forest as a socio-ecological infrastructure capable of shaping long-term urban form, civic life, and cultural continuity. The work develops a three-dimensional analytical model that integrates historical–cultural, ecological, and social–operational dimensions, asking how such a framework can both explain Rome’s historically constrained urban-forest system and be translated into a typology-based tool for climate adaptation, spatial equity, and transferability across Mediterranean heritage cities.Methodologically, the study bridges quantitative and qualitative approaches: archival and policy research, remote sensing and machine-learning analysis, urban morphological reading, and governance review. This combined lens situates Rome’s ongoing initiatives—from riparian corridor renewal to the reactivation of institutional lands—within a broader comparative terrain, engaging lessons from Shanghai’s ecological regeneration and the Meiji Shrine Forest in Tokyo as a cultural construction of nature. Four strategic spatial typologies emerge: Underutilized Urban Green Areas (PEEP), Riparian Corridors, Institutional Residuals, and Mobility Networks. Through site-scale interpretation, the research shows how ecological diagnosis can be articulated into spatial and governance strategies. The findings reveal that the strength of Rome’s urban-forest system rests not on the extent of green coverage, but on the continuity of its cultural landscape structure, the connectivity of its ecological networks, and the fairness and depth of public access and stewardship.In conclusion, the study argues that sustainability in heritage cities is not achieved through equilibrium, but through a continuous negotiation between memory and transformation. Landscape, in this regard, operates both as a way of knowing and a way of making: a medium through which ecological processes, social practices, and historical narratives can co-evolve. By showing how nature and culture may be woven into durable forms of urban resilience, the research contributes a transferable theoretical and methodological approach for cities seeking to align ecological adaptation with cultural identity and civic life.