The edible city perspective assigns to farming spaces within the metropolitan areas an important role in the transition towards sustainability. Farming spaces have long been re-conceptualized according to the principle of multifunctionality: in addition to the production of food, these spaces can produce feed and fibers, conserve biodiversity, produce renewable energy and offer social, cultural and leisure services to the citizens. Nevertheless urban dynamics, agricultural practices, environmental processes often collide with citizens’ expectations, requiring a great effort to manage their interaction. Cartographic representation can help the governance, visualising and communicating processes, values, risks and opportunities at stake. This contribution presents an experimental series of maps of agro-urban landscape in North-Eastern Italy, that has been conceptualised in 2010s as an “agropolitan” region. We focus on farming space in and around the city of Padua, which has been the capital of organic farming in this area since the 1980s. Here, citizens and the administration are collaborating for the establishment of an agro-urban park on a metropolitan scale. The aim of the maps is to represent not only physical characters of multifunctional agriculture, but also intangible aspects such as the meanings and values defined by different users of agro-urban landscape. The maps integrate an accurate fieldwork with some unpublished datasets coming from the Authority charged of the management of regional agricultural policy. Built by gathering the voices of the various subjects involved, maps are intended to act as a mediation tool between citizens and the administration, in order to activate the agro-urban park.
Mapping multifunctional agro-urban landscape to manage edible cities in North-Eastern Italy
Ferrario, Viviana
;D'Angelo, Fabrizio
2024-01-01
Abstract
The edible city perspective assigns to farming spaces within the metropolitan areas an important role in the transition towards sustainability. Farming spaces have long been re-conceptualized according to the principle of multifunctionality: in addition to the production of food, these spaces can produce feed and fibers, conserve biodiversity, produce renewable energy and offer social, cultural and leisure services to the citizens. Nevertheless urban dynamics, agricultural practices, environmental processes often collide with citizens’ expectations, requiring a great effort to manage their interaction. Cartographic representation can help the governance, visualising and communicating processes, values, risks and opportunities at stake. This contribution presents an experimental series of maps of agro-urban landscape in North-Eastern Italy, that has been conceptualised in 2010s as an “agropolitan” region. We focus on farming space in and around the city of Padua, which has been the capital of organic farming in this area since the 1980s. Here, citizens and the administration are collaborating for the establishment of an agro-urban park on a metropolitan scale. The aim of the maps is to represent not only physical characters of multifunctional agriculture, but also intangible aspects such as the meanings and values defined by different users of agro-urban landscape. The maps integrate an accurate fieldwork with some unpublished datasets coming from the Authority charged of the management of regional agricultural policy. Built by gathering the voices of the various subjects involved, maps are intended to act as a mediation tool between citizens and the administration, in order to activate the agro-urban park.
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