Human settlements in urban-rural settings: key issues in reference to the framework of “Horizon 2020”

While in the past human settlements have been concentrated in compact urban domains, nowadays they are often dispersed and scattered in a constellation of punctual episodes. Often times the city and the countryside merge each other and shape new landscapes, which can not be classified either as urban or as rural domains. Thus, contemporary landscapes are characterised by the emergence of hybrid spaces. Landscape planners are confronted with the need to develop new concepts, methodologies, and tools in order to manage possible scenarios, where human settlements develop in rural-urban settings. The expansion of the cities into its fringe presents many drawbacks, in terms of pollution, cost of transportation, weak sense of identity, etc.. Research work is needed to address the negative effects of the expansion. The European research framework Horizon 20202 stimulates the debate toward appropriate approaches to the mitigation of the negative effects of the urban-rural metropolis. Given this background, this papers aims at: i) recalling relevant issues for the interpretation of the papers included in certain sessions of the INPUT 2012 Conference, with a (non exclusive) emphasis for the sessions related to landscape planning; ii) discussing the relevance of research studies about human settlements in urban-rural settings in the framework of Horizon 2020.