Comparison Between Two Rural-Suburban Landscapes from Brussels and Milan

This chapter reports a research done by Ingegnoli V (university of Milan) and Marcheggiani E, Gulinck H, Lerouge F. (university of Leuven). Many queries arise on the bionomic state of these landscapes, presenting similar historical and climatic characters. A question regards the high amount of private gardens, as a “cultural” protective compensation to the urban expansion. Another question is the bionomic evaluation of forests, and whether there might be protected areas with lower ecological efficiency than non-protected one. A third question is concerned with the landscape type: does it remain in a range of agricultural types or does it reach the rural–suburban structure? Mostly, we have to check if the present condition of Asse could be similar to the bionomic state of Bollate, or in case they differ, how their transformation dynamics during the past two centuries would have been different. The diagnostic index (DI) of Asse resulted today 68.33 % of the optimum referred to the landscape type “agriculture-productive”, very similar to the value of Bollate in 1954: but, after this period, Bollate overcame the threshold and passed into the other landscape type “suburban–rural”, referring to which DI arises now to 70.0, while Asse is now in a belt of instability, that is the threshold between the two types, being not completely structured as suburban–rural but under the influence of Brussels. Pay attention that only through the reconstruction of the historical dynamics of those two landscapes, we are able to correctly understand the ecological significance of the “position” assumed by the two LU within the plane of the state of the system, going today towards a convergence.