Forms of Energy #10

On the relationship between town and country. The map of Zappata Romana.

When we think of a city, we think primarily of a built context with some green islands and many roads. The fathers of the Athens Charter also believed this; they imagined the city as a place to "live, work, play and circulate." And so, over the course of the 20th century, the city - first industrial and post-industrial - became an organism that, in terms of its basic needs (food for the nourishment of people and energy for the nourishment for buildings and machines), is fed daily from the outside, cleansing itself and returning waste products again to the outside (in landfills, sewers and the atmosphere). From the urban scale to that of the single building, each of the system's cells works like this: it requests and receives resources (which come from distant places, through long processes of preparation, storage and distribution), consumes them, and expels them.
It is needless to say (or perhaps not) that this very system creates congestion: the unsustainability of a one-way process moving in the direction of catastrophic and increasing entropy.

That is why the question of food (the first and most fundamental form of energy) must return to the center of thinking about habitat, because living means, first and foremost, having shelter, food and water. And although the statement may seem obvious, the data show that it is not so if rich Europe counts more than 5 million homeless people, and the response to the demand for food in the city counts for up to 40% of its ecological footprint (only for transport, packaging, storage and disposal of food products). That is why we can't pretend that it is not our problem (the architects), but on every scale and with each occasion, we must return to thinking about food and shelter: productive land and constructed land. The term "return" is used because, as we can see, for example, in Rome's famous 1748 Nolli map, the city contained endless gardens inside and outside the walls, still intact even after the Rome's transformations as Italy's capital in 1870.

Rome, Giardinieri sovversivi romani, Spot garden Mamma Roma

From this point of view, the research project entitled Zappata Romana (Roman Hoe), conducted by the UAP (Urban Architecture Project) firm is an interesting attempt to map an emerging phenomenon of re-appropriation by citizens of fallow areas, vacant or abandoned urban space transformed into new shared green areas and productive land - gardens or orchards, cultivated and managed by not individual farmers but by associations or groups of citizens. In this sense, the map is particularly interesting because it is not a simple enumeration of spontaneous urban gardens (approximately 2,500 as counted by the municipality), but rather it observes those "social job sites" (about 50) in which the relationship with the land encounters themes of public space as collective and shared space along with the integration of social and environmental sustainability.

As the designers state, the protagonists of these "green sites" are in fact "seniors' centers, churches, scout groups, social organizations and environmental groups, the disabled, youth, women," and in this sense, the care of these spaces become, above all, an opportunity to "create community" or, in other words, to weave new relationships between people.

The Zappata Romana map, click on the hyperlink in the article to view descriptions of every single project

In the historic downtown district of San Lorenzo, three associations took over a small parcel of privately owned land to build an area for the neighborhood's social life, creating a playground, a garden and space for social interaction. In the Garbatella neighbourhood, associations and some families recovered an area slated for transformation, creating urban community gardens. On the Ardeatina, community gardens were built and managed by former Eutelia employees. In Prato Fiorito, an urban park operated by a social cooperative promotes activities for the prevention and elimination of situations of social malaise and cultivates a vineyard that is used to produce wine and to support projects in developing countries. In Centocelle, one of the city's historic "suburbs," the recovery of the park around the Prenestino fort (home to an occupied social center) was the opportunity for a participatory process that involved citizens, centers for the elderly, social associations and the CSOA Forte Prenestino Community Center for the construction of a teaching garden, a theater space and play and socialization areas for children, teenagers and the elderly. The first urban garden park is located in Via della Consolata; it was created by the City of Rome, with tool sheds, benches and public drinking fountains.

Over the course of the 20th century, the city - first industrial and post-industrial - became an organism that, in terms of its basic needs is fed daily from the outside, cleansing itself and returning waste products again to the outside

Roma, Giardinieri sovversivi romani, Spot garden Ponte di ferro (Iron Bridge)

Coltivatorre is an organic vegetable garden run by young people with, and without, disabilities. The Fattorietta project is a cultural association that cultivates an organic garden producing grapes, olive oil and breeding farm animals just a stone's throw from the Vatican. The park in via Orazio Vecchi is managed by the Nautical Scout Group "Antares." And finally, even the students of the Valle Giulia Architecture School are creating a vegetable garden whose products will benefit those who use school cafeteria.

What emerges from this story is a need for the "country in the city; "representing a desire for a new relationship with the land and food, which we learned about in recent years from the extraordinary experience of Carlo Petrini and Slow Food, and which has been demonstrated everywhere by the success of the Campagna Amica (country friend) project by Coldiretti (the main Italian farmers organization) with its amazing farmers' markets. But there is also the need for a kind of city where population density is accompanied by patches of land free from asphalt and cement, patches from which the land emerges and where people can dirty their hands, manipulate, transform and cultivate the land, and maybe see together the egg and the chicken, sheep or other farm animals.

It is thus a more humane urban form because it is more animal and more vegetable or, better yet, more "natural" - nearest to the systemic model that nature teaches us, where everything belongs to a circular process that produces no scrap or waste material. A fertile soil that can support the sale of local fruit and vegetables but also a soil that can absorb wastewater as well as residual organic waste deriving from the food chain - fertilizers that are much healthier and more economical than the similar chemicals we now use.

Over the past 20 years, in a territory (the Province of Rome) in which the agricultural areas have been reduced by one-fifth, this bottom-up collective action represents not only a form of resistance but the experimentation of an alternative: that of taking over the city (and making it our own) not through the acquisition of private property but by taking care of a piece of public space, producing new environmental, economic and social dynamics.

Forms of Energy #10

On the relationship between town and country. The map of Zappata Romana.

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