The protection of the environment, the protection of ecological and natural resources, the sustainable enhancement of urban and rural spaces represent unquestionable ethical paradigms and unavoidable realities which the society of the third millennium must face. Environmental protection is accompanied by wider objectives related to the fruition of territorial contexts, under a perspective of active conservation; moreover, the intervention strategies have been modified according to the enhancement of resources and contexts, as well as the development of the specific features of the territory itself. Sustainability analysis as a tool to monitor, reinterpret, develop and enhance a territory, and in particular its natural heritage: this is the main theme of this book which reports the results of a research conducted by an interdisciplinary group sharing the Life Cycle approach. The Life Cycle approach is evolving in a methodology capable of incorporating the local as well as the global dimension, the macro and meso scale together with the product scale, the social dimension as well as the environmental and economic one. So, can such an approach be appropriate and practicable in the sustainability analysis of a territory? To this question, which is specifically directed at environmental aspects, biodiversity and environmental-spatial accessibility, the book intends to give an answer both on the theoretical level and on the practical one, with the introduction of a case study dealing with the territory hosting the Regional Park of Migliarino San Rossore Massaciuccoli in Tuscany. The book provides an overview of the analysis phases and of the indicators supporting the analysis and documents their application at different scales in the context of the Park.

This book is included in DOAB.