ARCO BLU. Capitale Naturale e disegno di ricomposizione paesaggistica nella media pianura lombarda

Compared to other areas in Lombardy, prior to the construction of the BreBeMI highway and the Milan–Venice high-speed rail line, the territory of the Lower Bergamo and Crema Plains retained a relatively intact character, with limited fragmentation and a network of routes that organized settlement patterns guided by historical connections to the centers of Brescia, Bergamo, and Crema. The cross-regional connectivity created by the division of the lowland river valleys was limited to the historic railway line, which was fully
integrated with the settlement development of the last century. The relatively reassuring image still present in recent descriptions proposed by the PTR and the first draft of the regional ecological network project has been compromised and eroded by infrastructural, agronomic, and settlement-related
transformations in recent years—essentially the last two decades—which have severely weakened the ecological system and made the possibilities for improving future connections more complex.
The Arco Blu project was launched in response to this serious environmental crisis affecting the Lower Bergamo Plain and Upper Crema regions—an area situated between the Adda, Serio, and Oglio rivers, straddling the provinces of Bergamo and Cremona. The project, employing a pragmatic approach (local actions) within a strategic vision (regional scale), was designed to address and remedy the progressive depletion of natural capital accumulated over centuries of traditional agriculture, caused by various concurrent factors that have disrupted the balance between nature and the human-made environment.