2008 WILL BE A YEAR DEDICATED TO RE-LAUNCHING THE ITALIAN WINE CITIES REGULATORY PLAN. CLIMATE CHANGE AND LANDSCAPE AWARENESS MAKE SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT A NECESSITY. KEY WORDS: “QUALITY PLANNING”

2008 will be the year dedicated to re-launching the Italian Wine Cities Regulatory Plan, the plan that would create improved environmental and urbanistic awareness in winemaking territories. The project was recently presented in Venice at “UrbanPromo 2007”.

“Our goal is to find new tools – explained association president Valentino Valentini – for an increased tutelage of quality winemaking districts and, to do this, the Wine Cities Regulatory Plan is an effective means. Much has been done in recent years by our municipalities, but we must further valorize our landscapes, the conservation of the environment and favor a sustainable development that can depict the high quality of our territories”.

The Wine Cities Regulatory Plan wants to give more value to the typical agricultural landscapes and the ecological quality and aesthetics of the winemaking world. The methodology will be updated and reinforced: measures to adapt to climate change, erosion control, flood prevention, reconstitution of water reserves, etc.

There is also an increased attention to landscape, a theme that has finally been rediscovered in recent years thanks to a renewed environmental sensibility and aesthetic. In terms of “quality construction”, the plan encourages municipalities to recuperate that which already exists and the creation of new rural and urban production areas that respond to these new aesthetic and environmental requisites, with the use, for example, of renewable sources of energy, of local and bioclimatic building materials.
There will be a secondary plan put into effect for the “construction regulation in wine cities”, that will also include precautionary notes for winemaking areas of particular prestige to ensure the exclusion of large complexes that risk damaging the territory. A classification and a cataloguing of vineyard land will also be made (with the use of the historic vineyard guild) as well as a classification of wineries (historic, warehouse, environmentally friendly, etc.), this last also making it possible to register rural wineries and houses for eventual ICI taxes.

The municipalities that, through general urban planning changes, are able to give more value to their winemaking areas of most prestige, will be awarded with the “Prize for Wine City Regulatory Planning”, which is promoted by Città del Vino in collaboration with Urbit, Urbanistica Italiana.