The debate over the value of the image of a city, which since the 1960s has been gaining wider room for reflection, has arisen as a criticism against the reductionism of the Modern Movement and highlighted the value of the qualitative aspects of an urban landscape. The question asked is if urban planning can in some way govern the image of a city. An investigation into which tools and strategies are necessary to defend the narrative of a city, its identity and its genius loci against the homologating forces that are transforming contemporary cities. The article explores the theoretical principles and methods being experimentally used to qualitatively manage the urban environment. Research investigates the innovative experimentation being carried out in Italy that has brought about the compiling of colour plans, and questions what their characteristics should be, so as to be effective in the management of the quality of an urban image. In order to focalise these crucial aspects, the case of the colour plan for the Egadi Islands is presented, illustrating the methods elaborated for the individualisation of the characteristics connoting its local urban landscape and the strategies adopted to cope with the risks to which they are exposed.

The debate over whether we are entering the Anthropocene Epoch focuses on the unequal consumption of the Earth system’s resources at the expense of nature’s regenerative abilities. To find a new point of balance with nature, it is useful to look back in time to understand how the so-called “Great Acceleration”—the surge in the consumption of the planet’s resources—hastened the arrival of the Anthropocene. Some particular places—for various reasons—survived the Great Acceleration and, as time capsules, have preserved more or less intact some landscape features that have disappeared elsewhere. How can we enhance these living archives that have come down to us? Through the analysis of the case study of the Valley of the Temples in Agrigento (Sicily, Italy), the article presents several initiatives that have tried to answer this question. For example, the pre-Anthropocene landscape of the Valley of the Temples has preserved rare specimens of some plant species from which living gene banks have been built for the propagation of species, such as the Living Museum of the Almond Tree. In addition, the Kolymbethra, an ancient example of a Mediterranean garden, has been brought back to life revealing finds related to Greek and Arab cultivation and irrigation systems. The research perspectives opened by the “disappeared landscapes” show that the knowledge of the historical landscape, in particular the mechanisms behind its resilience, is indispensable for countering the unsustainable voracity of the Anthropocene and rediscover a renewed synergy between humankind and nature.

This book is a result of the application of the Fluid City Protocol to Sicily and Malta coastal areas regeneration in the project called "Water And Territorial policiEs for integRation oF multisectoRial develOpmeNT" (in acronym WATERFRONT), funded by the Italia-Malta Operative Programme 2007-2013. The project (completed in 2013) aimed to define common guidelines, strategies and operational tools for planning coastal areas, based on cross-border exchange of experiences in Malta-Sicily for the dissemination of good practices in order to harmonize both the technical planning and political visions, thereby improving the conditions for the conservation, transformation, and development of the coastal tracts of the provinces of Trapani and Palermo and Malta. The strengthening of the infrastructural nodes and their functional, urban and social connection to the territories enhance the development of effective policies and programmes able to build a strategic platform that unifies the islands in the Mediterranean area. The exchange of experiences and the dissemination of good practices among the partners involved (University of Malta, University of Palermo and Local Authorities) improved techniques of territorial planning and evaluation at national, regional and local levels and improved the ability to apply environmental policies and programmes for risk prevention. The evaluation and interpretation of interventions already done and the analysis of risks and opportunities offered by dynamic transformations of the waterfront, already activated in Palermo, Trapani and the northern coast of Malta Island was the beginning of the project, representing itself as a model for all of the border of the Mediterranean. The result of the project contains three active scenarios for Malta, Trapani and Palermo, in which every site performs a specific approach to waterfront regeneration; however, every transborder experimental site is the representation of a specific reality about waterfront. The first is the northern coast of the Malta Island in which urban development opportunities define a context of integration between early cities and new settlements. The second is the periurban coast of Trapani that contains high natural qualities, but the natural heritage is not put to correct use, in respect of nature and v

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