Abstract

Although the association Italia Nostra was created in 1955 to carry out initiatives in defence of the historical-artistic heritage and the landscape, its actual commitment in the environmental field began to unfold only in 1960. The many prestigious town planners who were members of the association, which developed a vision of green spaces – urban and non-urban – as a service and a right for an increasingly urban population, contributed particularly to this maturation. The environmental profile of Italia Nostra was defined between 1961 and 1967 thanks not only to the elaborations of the town planners but also to a small working group dealing with national parks: the so-called “Green Group.µ This team was to be decisive in defining the main aspects of the framework law on Italian protected areas approved in 1991, in imposing a strongly innovative management in the “historicµ Abruzzo National Park, and in creating, in 1966, the first mass environmentalist association in Italy: WWF Italy.