Designing Agropolitana. Agriculture-based Explorations of Dispersed City

The agro-urban mix is a long-lasting idea, nowadays inspiring the urban debate once again. The role of agricultural space in food production and food security, energy production, environmental conservation, flood protection and in providing urban services, makes it potentially very important in the design of the contemporary territory. This might affect urban form, suggesting a new “agrarian” urbanism (Waldheim, 2010). The Veneto “città diffusa” (Veneto, Italy) is an urban-rural continuous, outcome of a particular kind of highly functionally mixed sprawl, that in the last few years has become a “small metropolis with agriculture inside” (Ferrario, 2009). This makes it possible to look at the dispersed city in a partially different way; to observe on the field and critically describe, trends, threats and opportunities of an interleaving coexistence between urban spaces and agriculture; to explore the possibility of a more sustainable and resilient way of letting agriculture, urban spaces and nature live together.