SITE VISIT OBJECTIVES
To present a case study on how to include green areas in the planning of cities, developing both already existing woodlands and new ones and to explore the benefits coming from them.

INSTITUTION/COMPANY PROFILE
The Venice Municipality created in 2001 an office to promote the wood project. This office was transformed in an Institution, Istituzione Bosco di Mestre in 2005.
At the beginning of October the first part of the future Mestre Wood was opened to the citizens. The area of 1,400 ha, located among the motorway, the railway and the airport has been provided by the Town planning-scheme for this purpose, will be transformed in a healthy lung for the city, by bedding thousands of trees of several endemic species (oaks, ash trees, elms, hazels).
Environmental compensation, cleaning up, energy savings, renaturalization of soil and water, hydro protection, biomass production are just few of the environmental and economic effects of the project.