Agropolitana: countryside and urban sprawl in the Veneto region (Italy)

In the Veneto central plane, historically shaped by agriculture, the countryside is being taken over by a particular form of urban sprawl, called città diffusa (dispersed city), where cities, villages, single houses and industries live alongside agriculture. This phenomenon is generally analyzed mainly as a typical urban/rural conflict, and the sprawl gets criticized as a countryside destroyer and a land consumer. As observed since the Eighties by some researches about land consumption, in the areas where agriculture was accompanied by industrial activity, the interaction between agriculture and urbanization was not necessarily negative; actually, agricultural activities in urbanized areas often received more of an impulse to better themselves in terms of production techniques. Even if it was true that urban growth did not take into account any of the natural needs of the farm and had instead promoted the fragmentation of farms and fields and favoured precarious jobs, urbanized areas did not necessarily create the conditions for abandoning farming activities. On the contrary agriculture landscape was in a certain way “protected” by urban sprawl and agriculture marginalization. This was particularly true in the Veneto central plane. If we compare it to the territory outside the mostly urbanized area, in the rural parts of the region, where agriculture has no strong economic competitor and land ownership is much less fragmented, where agricultural activity can be more “rational”, we can then spot these three paradoxes. Firstly, agriculture as an economic activity inside the città diffusa is still rentable, with production values per hectare higher than in the rural territory. Secondly, agricultural space has a better ecological value inside the urbanized territory than outside. Thirdly, historical agricultural landscape is better preserved within the città diffusa than in the rural territory, and it is often used by people who live nearby as a sort of territorial park. If seen from this point of view, dispersed urbanization in the Veneto region can be seen as a sort of prototype of a new contemporary form - neither urban nor rural – of cultural landscape, where farming spaces can have a public role strictly linked to the urban population's needs. In the last years Veneto region is facing a metropolization process. The new simplifying, polarizing and densifying scenario asks to reconsider the place that agriculture and agriculture space has. If in the past urban sprawl seems to have been rather a conservation factor for the ecological and cultural richness of the agricultural space, we now must say that agricultural space itself plays an important multifunctional role in this urbanized territory. Agriculture space, in fact, has the capacity to host contemporarily different functions like food production, energy production, environmental values, leisure and other social services. Its permeability performs well in cases of heavy rain and, under certain conditions, it can be used as an emergency flooding area. Agriculture space will probably be obliged in future to reply to increasing and conflicting requests. Agropolitana - the name was suggested in the very beginning of the new regional plan process as a way to explain città diffusa agro/urban structure - could also be a way to imagine a possible future. The Veneto central plane is not simply an urbanized countryside: it is a metropolis with a lot of agriculture inside it. In this sense, the presence of agricultural space inside the upcoming Veneto metropolis must be considered as a warranty for a sustainable future. The agropolitana concept, however, must be better explored in order to integrate agricultural space into the design of urban development. Devising a concrete project for this space – a project for its multifunctionality – is what still needs to be done.