Upper Valdarno and the Florence Area. Vulnerability and hydraulic risk fifty-six years later

Abstract

Climate change brings periods of severe drought and catastrophic floods, events that are happening all over the world right now. This article evaluates the possibility that disastrous flood events, such as that of 1966, still occur in Valdarno and Florentine area, the latter taken as a sample case. A holistic approach such as the territorialist one allows going beyond customary end-of-pipe solutions, converting emergencies into opportunities to strengthen territorial systems as a whole. ‘River contracts’ extended to the entire Valdarno area, in particular, can be an important tool to increase the resilience of the whole basin, but only in the framework of a strategy considering environmental protection as the central goal of territorial policies.