Agricolture urbanizzate per nuovi paesaggi metropolitani

This thesis outlines a landscape strategy for what the author defines “Urbanised Agricultures”, and signifies a set of practices and experimentations variously associated with multifunctional agriculture, the latter being a target of European policies since years. The expression landscape strategy defines an assemblage of policies and local actions able both to restore and enhance peculiarities and dissimilarities of local metropolitan contexts (including their environmental, economic and social resources) and to fuel a new sociality, green economies, and innovative spatial configurations suitable for contemporary living needs. The thesis sketches a landscape strategy which does not coincide with an a priori pre-figuration of space. It is rather a tool to manage ordinary territorial transformations and to hold together a variety of heterogeneous but coherent interventions, mutually conditioning. These interventions can be implemented through different actions and through the involvement of public and/or private entities, at different times. For this reason, although conceived for the territory of Rome, the landscape strategy here proposed is of general interest: it can be adapted and repeated in other European metropolitan areas. Three essential features characterise the landscape strategy: - Peculiarities and differences for new Urbanised Agricultures (goals). “Peculiarities” and “differences” refer to the set of potential and needs expressed by a specific local community. Spaces, agents and activities are three categories used to interpret the metropolitan landscapes in relation to new Urbanised Agricultures. This interpretation is carried on in the light of “multifunctionality”, which guarantees an overall protection of rural land assumed as a collective good. Multifunctionality can be expressed through complex shapes, able to adapt to various contexts enriching their own specificities; - System devices for new Urbanised Agricultures: green infrastructures (tool). The landscape strategy proposed by the author overcomes spatial, functional and administrative fragmentation of the contemporary city proposing green infrastructures as a “system device”. A green infrastructure can adapt to each territory’s specificities as a result of its network structure and its mutable structure, and can concentrate a set of very different spaces back to a single, coherent project system (spaces different for protection system, property rights, transformation potential, economic and financial opportunities, capability in providing ecosystem services, etc.); - Social designing for new Urbanised Agricultures (actions). The landscape strategy does not impose any binding role to the project, and identifies the members of a community both as beneficiaries and as producers of their own life context; consequently, the landscape strategy proposes to conduct “Workshops of social designing” as key actions to define new Urbanised Agricultures. Workshops represent the place where an operational dialogue about current relations between rural and urban systems opens by using a project proposal. The goal is to build a network of individuals who share a co-responsibility in the production and management of their landscape, in relation to new job opportunities and new collective benefits (social, cultural and economic benefits, improvements in time organisation, enlarged welfare, etc.). Structure of the research. The research is divided into three parts. Each part pursues “autonomously” a specific purpose but all converge towards the same direction – albeit in different ways – namely the definition of the landscape strategy. - Part I. Modern evolutionary characters of urban/rural relationship (Concepts). The first part of the thesis aims at presenting the latest developments in the urban/rural relationship, by assuming three different points of view: organisation of rural society, urban planning, and town planning legislation. These three thematic interpretations show how city and countryside are two sides of the same evolution, outlining the historical and cultural transformation of fundamental concepts still detectable both in current dynamics (subjects of Part II), both in contemporary designers’ landscape theories (addressed in Part III); - Part II. Contemporary geography of urban/rural relationship (People/tendencies/actions). The second part of the thesis intends to delineate a possible geography of contemporary relationships between cities and countryside. The resulting “map” emerges by the analysis of individuals, spaces and activities related to agricultural practices carried out in urban areas and noticeably relevant for their potential benefits to the city (these practices are already object of several urban policies in the realm of Europe 2020 Strategy). This study tends to demonstrate how the definition of more equitable and sustainable urban paradigms in metropolitan contexts passes through experimenting new forms of local-based multifunctional agriculture; - Part III - Landscapes in progress: interpretations and proposals (critical comparative assessment and project proposal). The third part of the thesis aims to define a Landscape Strategy (goals, tools and actions) to foster new forms of Urbanized Agricultures for supporting local communities in metropolitan areas. A critical analysis of a series of landscape case studies allowed an investigation of the degree of fertility of Pierre Donadieu’s and Richard Ingersoll’s landscape theories. The examination highlights a sequence of elements able to support “potential projects” and which the author reorganised, re-interpreted and conveyed in a strategy for new metropolitan landscapes. This strategy understands a re-balance of urban-rural relations as an opportunity for experimenting initiatives of social innovation.

Le “Agricolture urbanizzate” sono l’insieme di pratiche e sperimentazioni variamente connesse alla multifunzionalità agricola nei territori della diffusione insediativa. Il lavoro di tesi delinea una strategia di paesaggio come modalità di lavoro concreta e ripetibile per la messa a punto di questi nuovi paesaggi metropolitani, forme innovative di equilibrio tra politica, agricoltura e comunità, e occasione di sperimentazione d’iniziative di Innovazione sociale. La proposta scaturisce da un’originale disamina sull’attuale “grado di fertilità” delle teorie di paesaggio di Richard Ingersoll e Pierre Donadieu rispetto a soggetti, spazi, comportamenti e politiche coinvolti nella descrizione di una possibile geografia contemporanea delle relazioni città/campagna. La valorizzazione dei contesti metropolitani locali quale obiettivo della strategia presuppone il rifiuto di una visione vincolistica del progetto di paesaggio e lo svolgimento di Laboratori di progettualità sociale, azione-chiave per la costruzione delle nuove Agricolture Urbanizzate. La Green Infrastructure è assunta come vero e proprio “dispositivo di sistema” della strategia, strumento di progetto duttile e declinabile in grado di superare i problemi di frammentazione spaziale, funzionale, e amministrativa della città contemporanea. La proposta s’inquadra nello scenario economico relativo al Periodo di Programmazione Europea 2014-2020.