Territories of urban-rural hybridisation in the agroecological transition. A spatial exploration of agroecology initiatives in Veneto plain.

While Food Planning has long been interested in food spaces related to urban and metropolitan contexts, there are few case studies today that consider territories and processes of diffusion and dispersion, where urban settlements and infrastructures mix and hybridise with the rural tissue. However, in recent years, there has been a renewed interest in the territories of urban-rural hybridisation, in an attempt to overcome those spatial categories that continue to structure much of western urban thought (city-country; urban-rural, etc.). In fact, beyond food production and the city-countryside distinction, some scholars question the renewed relationship between urbanism and agriculture and the latter's role in determining the future of inhabited territories in a necessary phase of agro-ecological transition. If numerous urban statistics and policies promote the prospect of a global urban destiny of humanity, the new processes of reterritorialisation of food systems and some traces of back-to-the-land movements, re-interrogate their universality and give rise to the first hypotheses of an urban exodus. The observation of agro-ecology initiatives and the exploration of related emerging tensions, conflicts and imaginaries could help confirm or refute these hypotheses and sketch new scenarios of the future of inhabited territories. Starting from these reflections, the contribution will focus on the construction of the methodology for the research project entitled "Territories of urban-rural hybridisation in the agro-ecological transition", financed by the Vinci program of the French-Italian University (UFI) and built between the École d'architecture de la Ville & des Territoires Paris-Est (Ensa Paris-Est) and the Iuav University of Venice (Iuav). The project stems from the desire of the two partners to collaborate in the construction of a shared knowledge of the territories of urban-rural hybridisation in Europe and in particular on the transformations affecting the spaces of emerging agro-ecological initiatives in the Italian case of the central Veneto plain. How can the emerging agro-ecology initiatives help us rethink the culture of urban and spatial design? What tensions, conflicts and new imaginaries are emerging? What future scenarios lie ahead for the territories of European urban-rural hybridisation?