Policy tools for preserving peri-urban agricultural landscape: from social justice to quality of life

Landscape preservation policies can affect quality of life. In the peri-urban area of Milan, public landowners implemented new forms of lease agreements to transfer maintenance costs of built rural heritage to their tenants, avoid degradation and add value to unused buildings. The aim of the study, based on a qualitative sociological analysis, is to examine this policy tool through the lenses of social justice, investigating its impact on quality of life. The questions that will be asked include: what dynamics of social justice are embedded in this tool? What could be the indirect effects on landscape preservation and quality of life? The main results show that the same policy tool, if implemented with different strategies, can lead to very different outcomes in terms of landscape preservation and quality of life, depending on the elements of social justice considered as well as contextual and individual characteristics.