Urban agriculture: a way to a sustainable complementarity between the city and the countryside

Abstract

For centuries, town and country maintained a relation of dichotomy and complementarity, but, because of industrial and technological progress, this dichotomy had faded way and the complementary links were broken. The country, with less population and fewer labour, affected in its economic and social structure, lost the ability to produce enough and high-quality food for town that, besides its social and environmental problems, has been seeking for solutions inside itself to improve the quality of urban life, but never stopped to extend its limits and to consume agricultural soil. We evolved from the traditional approach of urban / rural into a global landscape: urban and rural get mixed, creating discontinuities needing to be overcome. We believe urban agriculture, in its different implementation forms, is a way to overcome them by allowing a landscape construction that will retrieve the elementary processes of production, recreation and protection and, therefore, the lost complementarity.