Open space (OS) is a key element in the provision of ecosystem services (ES) in urban environments. Under a land cover-land use perspective, cities are incorporating into the expansion process to different types of surfaces: sealed, paved surfaces and OS. The first corresponds to a land cover change while the second, which includes bare soil, grass, forest or any other type of non-sealed surface, corresponds to a land use change, without physical transformations. As a land use change OS is able to keep fundamental pre-existing ecological properties.

In the vast majority of cities all over the world, urban growth takes place in peri-urban spaces.  City models are in deep crisis facing the disappearance of differences between city and countryside. The urban sprawl of settlements in Italy, and also in Europe, is quite different from sprawl phenomenon and suburbs basically referring to American cities. Urban sprawl is characterized by one-family houses, dispersed in the countryside and by large industrial enclaves close to infrastructures networks. Italian situation can be interpreted as a peri-urban model instead of sprawl condition.

The land coast, with particular emphasis the port-city, are in fact used more and more like a menu in which different users increasingly move freely according to their needs.
The new definition parameters with respect to which the landscapes are recognizable, articulating configurations, immutable, and not concluded, but on the contrary, variables are always open and more leads, not the placement of functions, but the interaction between subjects, and actually pushed social, cultural, political and economic.