The urban nature of agriculture: Bidirectional trends between city and countryside

Abstract

The paper presents a wide range of images, contexts and issues related to contemporary forms of urban–rural interface. The urban and rural environments come in contact in various ways, generating patterns with hybrid identities which can be read both on a regional scale (in those cases where cities merge to form megapolitan conurbations), on an urban scale (suburbs of the cities), on a settlement scale (city quarters, farmyards and farmsteads), and even with regards to single buildings. This creates manifold diversified configurations of interface spaces, showing seemingly opposite trends. This work focuses on these bidirectional trends, which are discussed by means of a selection of different concepts, images, projects and experiences, within the international context. On the one hand, an increasing number of projects insert what is commonly associated with the idea of countryside into the cities: urban agriculture, mainly located in periurban open spaces, but in some cases even within the built system through various forms of integration with the building envelope, in line with a growing sensitivity about the need to conceive ways of virtuous relationship between food production, consumption and environment. On the other hand, town planning in many cases “ejects” the spaces for business and leisure, locating shopping malls, entertainment and (agri)tourism centres within the countryside. Moreover, typical rural spaces and activities (farms, farm holidays, wine farms, etc.) often refer to urban styles, due to poor design attention, or rather to marketing strategies aimed at enhancing the farm image. Thus, settlements located in rural areas show markedly increasing urban characteristics, with regards to their built environment, open spaces, and outdoor furniture. Whilst many scholars and designers have focused on reinterpreting the agricultural functions when these are inserted in urban architecture and built areas, further interdisciplinary work is needed to analyse how urban functions can be brought into the countryside and improve the quality of rural settlements.