Urban Parks represent a political action imperative for all post-modern societies engaged in the struggle for the conservation of biodiversity and safeguard of the landscape. If we consider that half of the world population lives in cities and that this value is bound to grow and reach the 61% by 2030, we can recognize the great educational, social, health, environmental, and tourist benefits the urban protected areas can offer to "citizens", and not only.
People living in urban centers tend to progressively lose the relationship with natural environment, both in physical and spiritual terms; in these particular contexts, the creation of protected areas aims at filling this gap of sense and sensations by building a dream and defending a memory.
The memory is the rural, landscape, and environmental identity of a territory, which has characterized the birth and evolution of the urban centers and which, in an era of great global social changes, promotes participation and spirit of community.
The dream is represented by the attempt to accomplish a project of historical, environmental, landscape, and social enhancement which should connect city, population, and nature through ecological-social networks aware that the struggle for the conservation of biodiversity and for a better planet will not be won by just fighting in the heart of the Amazonian forest, but also in the manifold textures of metropolis like Rome, New York, London, or Rio de Janeiro, where a civil and environmental conscience develops and where the behaviors leading to global environmental changes can be altered.

The document adopted in the thematic session on metropolitan parks during the Second National Conference of Protected Areas:
"Parchi metropolitani e periurbani: il ruolo delle Aree Protette nella riqualificazione dei territori urbani" (Italian text)
Speaker: Valter Giuliano

The Session - Parchi metropolitani e periurbani: il ruolo delle Aree protette nella riqualificazione dei territori urbani (Italian text) Second National Conference of the Italian Protected Areas
(Torino- Lingotto, 11th-13th October 2002)

Attachment
I Parchi e le Aree metropolitane (Italian text)

The Association Fedenatur