How our neighbourhood landscape is heavily man-made, shaped in particular by infrastructure and built-up areas causing heavy impacts on ecosystems and biodiversity. The built-up parts and the logistical/industrial/technological infrastructures (eg. harbours, aeroports, train railways ecc.) interrupt the natural and ecological connections of one's city (i.e. accessibility), a phenomenon observable mostly from the neighbourhood scale. While it is increasingly important to talk about slow mobility, walking in/through the landscape, proximity and the 15-minute city, at the same time it is fundamental to preserve the natural connections inside the city that enable the production of ecosystem services and preserve biodiversity as a support for the quality of life.
The unit focuses on:

• Observing the relationships between natural and anthropic elements of the everyday landscape, focusing on connections, barriers (caused by infrastructures, property, buildings) and impacts on the status and health (quality) of ecosystem networks in the neighbourhoods;
• Understanding the fundamental actors that cross these connections (flora, fauna, human beings, goods...) and shape the landscape as a network;
• Understanding the historical evolution of relationships, ecological networks and connections in the city, particularly on a neighbourhood scale, considering anthropic and natural changes and threats related to land development (housing development, transport, accessibility, public and private property).

By observing their own city and neighbourhood through images, photographs and digital tools (e.g. Google earth), students will learn how to identify and assess the natural and artificial connections and any barriers.
Therefore, students acquire a method to understand how connections are used and what they connect. Teachers motivate students to critically observe the landscape around them with the focus on the people's impacts on it, stimulating thinking about existing problems and possible solutions/improvements in order to improve green/soft networks in local contexts. 

Pupils will:

• discover the quality of natural and human connections with the identification of the vulnerabilities, criticalities and potentials of the different anthropogenic and natural connections in their own city and neighbourhood (I);
• realise that the current connections are the result of historical evolution of anthropogenic and natural relationships and relative changes (II) (III);
• learn that the redevelopment, restoration and planning actions have an impact on climate and sustainability, which is why we speak about the 15-minute city or the redesigning of the green and public city with greenways, etc. (IV);
• realise that the landscape is made up of multiple connections: flora and fauna, people flows (i.e. mobility), etc. and the human beings need connections and so do flora and fauna(I);
• realise that some anthropic elements (infrastructures, buildings, walls of private property) within the city and the neighbourhood generate a barrier effect, with the consequent reduction of human accessibility, fauna movements and the alteration of the flora (II)(III);
• discover that the infrastructure, both technological and traffic, creates impacts (disruption of the ecological network, increased traffic, noise, pollution, CO2 emissions from exhaust gases) on biodiversity, air, human health (II)(III);
• learn the ability to propose solutions and strategies for a more sustainable city and neighbourhood (IV) (V).

Students will therefore be motivated to look critically at the landscape they inhabit, recognising the system of relationships and connections that are important for preserving biodiversity, promoting a sustainable, respectful lifestyle and counteracting climate change starting with everyday actions in our neighbourhood landscape. The contents aim to encourage a high quality of urbanism and landscape, also taking into account all the actors in the landscape.