Rural landscape in transition

European rural areas are becoming increasingly degraded, abandoned and fragmented. Rapid structural changes in the agricultural practices, together with new socio-economic conditions, have rapidly changed the main structural assets of the traditional rural landscape. Today the sustainable transition of rural areas represents one of the most challenges for planners and architects. Academics have debated about the rural landscape challenges by identifying the loss of tangible and intangible cultural heritage values as one of the main risks for rural areas. However, the understanding of a sustainable rural transition needs a solid theoretical and practical framework. Today practitioners in architecture and planning find themselves dealing within a rigid planning context often based on the traditional land use and zoning. Numerous traditional landscape values are mostly threatened or already disappeared. Sometimes, landscape values and functions are also losing their importance due to a rigid planning system. In fact, institutionalized planning practices struggle to find future directions for the rural areas since those practices are often limited to the built environment and physical planning, and within the administrative borders. This thesis explores how rural areas and traditional landscape could start a process of transition and development. In particular, the thesis statement focuses on the institutionalized planning practices that are struggling to deal with the current issues in the rural areas, such as the growing abandonment of these areas, increasing fragmentation of landscape and decreasing presence of work force population. Is seems that some of these planning practices are not conceived to manage dynamic and changing situations. The thesis proposes a strategic spatial plan as a possible additional tool to better deal with the transition of rural landscape. Specifically, the thesis focuses on the municipality of Casalgrande that is located in Emilia Romagna Region, in the northern part of Italy. First, the thesis illustrates, through a quantitative analysis the structural assets of the European rural areas. Moreover, it provides a literature review of the academic debate on traditional rural landscape and the relevance of a sustainable transition that is able to transmit tangible and intangible values (such as rural heritage buildings and sense of identity, respectively). The thesis also presents the results from the literature review of strategic spatial planning studies and its relation to the institutionalized planning practices. Secondly, the study presents the findings from the planning document analysis, socio-spatial analyses and site observations of Casalgrande. The results show that the current planning system -which refers to masterplan and zoning- is currently dealing with the rural transition with a passive approach. The rural heritage and the rural landscape both classified as areas of high cultural heritage values are in fact regulated by restrictive norms of safeguard and protection. On the other hand, the characteristics of the population structure are increasingly changing. To this end, new foreigners are arriving while the work force population is getting old, however, the municipality is not providing citizens with adequate public services. Finally, the thesis proposes a strategic planning for Casalgrande that mostly consists of a strategic vision and a strategic process. Within the strategies, the rural areas are seen as areas able to continue a rural tradition while hosting new services to satisfy the current societal needs and standards. Moreover the rural transition of the municipality need to be seen within a comprehensive urban-rural transition that considers the main municipal challenges such as abandonment of rural areas, and industrial cores as urban and landscape barrier