Aurora Cavallo

Cities, Agriculture and Changing Landscapes in Urban Milieu: The case of Rome

The aim of this paper is to examine the characteristics and the dynamics that characterize urban agriculture in the case of Rome. We summarize in an evolutionary approach the stylized facts of the relationship between town and the context of agricultural production in order to propose a taxonomy of the types of urban agriculture. The effort proposed here is a preliminary analysis of urban agriculture through a system of criteria for the classification of the distribution of the functional and relational features of agricultural activities in urban phenomenon. These interpretative categories attempt to reconstruct the causal relationships that translate agricultural production models (farms’ data, legal forms, use of natural resources, localization), in specific forms in the spatial and functional urban dimension - physical and social - and their role in territorial milieu. On the theoretical level this analysis is embedded in the co-evolutionary paradigm and looks to the landscape as the result of interactions between the environmental system and the action of human who lives and uses the territory. This typization ultimately still seems a goal to achieve, this is the first step towards the construction of an interpretative and vocabulary typological then be systematize with the morphological data and those of land use.

Resilient Agrarian Landscapes in Face of Changes: The Coevolutive Approach to Understand the Links Between Communities and Environmental Characters

The paper focuses on a conceptual framework through analyses of the relationship that links and communities to their places and determines the capacity for resilience of those landscapes in the face of changes. The coevolutionary approach has been recognized as a key framework for understanding change in complex social–ecological systems and as a foundational concept for ecological economics (Costanza et al. in Introduction to ecological economics. St Lucie Press, Florida, 1997). The coevolutive approach describes as a dynamic relationship between environmental systems and social systems. Coevolution is different than mere co-dynamic change, in that at least one—social or environmental—system is evolving or changing through variation, selection and inheritance. This leads to the necessity of identifying the set of anthropic—or cultural—and natural—biological—relationships that influence change within these relationships, determining their destiny or, in other words, whether these landscapes are conserved or lost. The need to protect local resources, and conserve the functions that come from natural capital, determines processes that can be guaranteed in a more efficient and sustainable way by local communities. The paper discusses the conceptual hypothesis on a case study of the UNESCO Vineyard Landscapes, based on the Switzerland case of Lavaux. The research concludes with a view of adaptive management, aimed to the preservation of landscape values, while respecting the natural dynamics of the landscape evolution.

Between City and Countryside: Changing Nexus in the Urban Phenomenon of Rome

A lack of productive urban land, existence of food insecurity, an uncontrolled urban growth, lack of stable local food markets, land use conflicts in urban areas and a general lack of knowledge about urban and Peri-Urban food production, all join to fuel debate about cities and food in a time of change. Referring to the Mediterranean geography, cities do not originate from the countryside, but rather it is the countryside that originates from a city that it is barely capable of feeding. The settlement models that largely define the forms and processes of the farming and environmental systems to which they belong characterize the territorial dynamics of the Mediterranean urban areas. Looking at agri-food systems, even at a local level the aspects that have to be considered are: market variability and the price of raw materials, how these reflect on food prices definition, access to natural resources and the level of urbanisation. This work starts by analysing the relationship between city and countryside, to then reinterpret the current day context of Rome through factors that outline and define such a relationship. The relationship between food and cities—seen not as a simple fact but as a complex system of social, economic and political behaviour—can tell the story of many Mediterranean cities and certainly that of Rome. This is because the agricultural and urban facets of Rome are set side by side, without interruption, defining a breadth, a space that somehow epitomises the Roman landscape itself.

I sistemi agrari nel fenomeno urbano: geografie e processi territoriali di roma metropolitana

L’evoluzione delle citta e delle forme dello spazio insediativo hanno prodotto mutamenti che hanno contribuito a ridefinire i rapporti tra la dimensione urbana - fisica e sociale - e i sistemi agroambientali entro cui essa si colloca. Il contributo mira a identificare paradigmi interpretativi dell’evoluzione del ruolo del primario come ordinatore degli equilibri locali. Attraverso l’analisi in un caso studio dell’area metropolitana romana, si esaminano i rapporti tra sistemi agrari e fenomeno urbano in quei quadri locali in cui i processi di territorializzazione sembrano essere segnati da una parte dalla progressiva frammentazione della dimensione agraria, dall’altra dall’affermazione del primario che in alcuni ambiti ricopre un ruolo chiave nel definire nuove ruralita. In entrambe le traiettorie vanno definendosi condizioni intermedie caratterizzate da esiti spaziali e relazionali come da strutture sociali e produttive che il saggio mira a categorizzare e interpretare.