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In the face of contemporary economic, environmental, and social changes, one of the main challenges facing cities is to build and realise a vision for a sustainable future. To do so, a number of local sustainability strategies are promoted in urban policymaking with the goal of improving citizens' participation and quality of life. The aim is to empower citizens and enable them to be more active in local and global sustainability issues. This paper focuses on identifying and discussing the alternative spaces in which the future of the city can be collectively envisioned, considering processes of socio‐ecological change and power relations, consistent with an urban political ecology. The purpose of such spaces should be to link daily behaviour patterns of sustainability with urban environmental governance through processes of participation. In particular we suggest the adoption of an integrative approach between top‐down and bottom‐up approaches. One example is an experimental process, called the Altrevie project, which took place in a pilot area of the city of Brescia and involved 150 families. The approach is an example of participatory action research. Its first phase was a sample survey to obtain an initial representation of the lifestyles of the residents. In the second phase, residents learnt to measure their ecological footprint and participated in workshops and laboratories to improve the sustainability of their lifestyles. During the project, we identified and tried to promote alternative spaces in which to imagine and build the sustainable city: spaces of alternative consumption which go beyond the traditional market system (according to alternative economic geographies); and spaces of participation that can promote an integrative method between top‐down and bottom‐up approaches. These different approaches to urban development create unique conditions for seeking sustainability through innovative and participative visions.

The lemon houses of Lake Garda provide Ecosystem Services, due to their history and their deep rooting in the landscape. Unfortunately, Urban Planning hasn’t ever taken into account these possible benefits. In fact, it has always allowed their reuse as residences and it has sustained the conservation of the buildings only. The lack of interest in reintroducing lemon growing or other agricultural activities has produced a noticeable impoverishment of the local landscape. To overcome these limits, Urban Planning should be oriented to implement practices, which take root in and bring out the variety of local landscapes. In order to reach this result, Urban Planning may help to bring some lemon houses, especially the abandoned or the most vulnerable ones, back to their original agricultural vocation, reintroducing autopoietic agricultural techniques, which are in balance with the environment. An interdisciplinary approach may be adopted in a profitable way, to strengthen the efficiency of the Urban Planning. Aiming at this interdisciplinary approach the paper reports our first investigations concerning the contribution of different disciplines, which will help Urban Planning to consider, in case of the reuse of Lake Garda lemon houses, immaterial benefits and to reintroduce activities linked to their original vocation.

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