Re-Imagining Resilient Productive Landscapes: Perspectives from Planning History (Cities and Nature)

This book explores how lessons from past urban planning experiences can inform current debates on urban agriculture. Productive landscapes today have been posited as instruments for the positive transformation related to territorial fragility and abandonment, promoting social cohesion, food security and wider environmental and economic benefits. The book will re-map the way in which seeming landscape limitations and challenges can be turned into potential, innovation and a new lease of urban-rural life. It does so by drawing on significant past urban agricultural experiences in planning as vectors for new critical reflections relevant to re-igniting ideas for future envisioning of urban scenarios in which productive landscapes play fundamental transformative roles. The focus is on planning ideas and the roles of key individual planners, all of which have designed agricultural strategies for the city at some point in their careers. It intends to help us today reimagine urban-rural relationships, and the transformation of under or mis-used urban open spaces, peri-urban areas, fringe conditions and in-between spaces. Contents 6 Contributors 8 Rethinking the Urban–Rural Relationships and Productive Urban Landscapes 10 1 Introduction 10 2 Challenges and Perspectives for Changing Territories 11 3 Urban and Rural: Dichotomies, Relationships and the Overcoming of Categories 13 3.1 Proximity and Differentiation 15 3.2 Integration and Dissolution 16 4 Productive Urban Landscapes 17 4.1 The Dilemma of the Commons 19 4.2 Right to Food as a Design Action 21 5 Discussion 22 5.1 Domains of Human Activity on the Environment 22 5.2 The Question of Reconnection 23 5.3 Transcalarity 24 5.4 Resilience and Sustainability of Food Systems 24 5.5 Food Security 25 6 Final Remarks 26 References 26 Urban-Rural Relationships 30 Paths to the Green City: On the Work of Fritz Schumacher 31 1 Fritz Schumacher—A Life Working for a “Better City” 31 2 Transformation of the Existing Urban Fabric: Reforming the City 32 3 Hamburg’s Stadtpark—A Park “To Live In” 35 4 Excursus: Altona Volkspark—“From the People for the People” 38 5 Garden City or Provisional Solution? The Langenhorn Small-Scale Housing Estate—Fritz Schumacher Estate 40 6 “Arteries” of Green Planning in and Around Cologne 43 7 “A Belt Around Hamburg’s Old Body”—New Residential Areas 46 8 “Urban Imperialism” or “Choking Hazard”—Regional Planning 50 9 Structural Change, Appropriation and Adaptation 53 10 Fritz Schumacher’s Legacy and Transfiguration 54 References 55 Land-Nature and its Economic and Cultural Value: The Case of the Zuiderzee Reclamation 58 1 Introduction 59 2 City-Countryside Debate at the Turn of the Twentieth Century and the Dutch Protagonists 61 3 The Two First Polders, Wieringermeer and Noordoostpolder. Food Production as Condition Sine Qua Non 63 3.1 Aesthetic Advisor Granpré Molière and the Future Landscape of the Zuiderzeepolders Rapport 64 3.2 Composing Urban Settlements, Agrarian Allotments, and Landscape Elements 65 3.3 From Polder to Polder; Learning from Each Other. The Noordoostpolder Experiment 67 4 The Experience of the Flevopolders—Eastern Flevopolder and Southern Flevopolder, Van Eesteren and the Urbanization Ideas of the 70s. Dismissing Agricultural Use for Other Forms of Production 70 4.1 Modernization of Production. Up and-Downscaling 72 4.2 Lelystad and Almere, The Future is a Process 73 5 Conclusion 75 References 77 Sharp’s Town and Countryside 79 1 Introduction 79 2 British Urban Development at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century 80 3 Thomas Sharp 82 3.1 His Beginnings 82 3.2 Approaches of the Planner 83 4 Town and Countryside: The Book 84 4.1 The Countryside 85 4.2 The Town 88 4.3 The Country and the Town: Two Antithetical Realities 91 4.4 The Practice of These Ideas, the Missed Opportunity 94 5 From Town Planning to Town and Country Planning 96 References 97 Tinctured Polarities: Town and Country Planning for Post-war London 98 1 Introduction 98 2 The Urban–Rural Question in England in the Interwar Period 100 3 Polarities: Opposition and Complementarity in Town and Country Planning 101 4 Tinctures: Rus in Urbe 107 5 Conclusions 112 References 114 The Roots of the City–Countryside Relationship: A Lesson from Post-war Town Planning in Italy 116 1 Introduction 116 2 Italy’s Post-War Planning Framework: Problems and Challenges 119 3 Giovanni Astengo, Between Rationality and Reformism 121 3.1 A Biography of Civic Commitment Crossing Academia, Administration and Profession 121 3.2 Organic Rationality in Astengo’s Career 122 3.3 The Rise of Regional Planning and the Problem of the Food Self-sufficiency of Cities 124 4 The Municipal Plan of Assisi 126 5 Conclusion 130 References 132 Étienne de Groër: Planning the Lisbon Garden City Region 135 1 Introduction 135 2 Planning the Region Through the Garden City Theory 137 3 Étienne de Groër 140 4 Étienne de Groër’s Vision of a Garden City 146 5 Étienne de Groër’s Garden City Vision Applied to Lisbon and Its Surrounding Region 148 6 Conclusions 154 References 156 City and Countryside: A Historical Landscape System to Enhance. The Case of the Territorial Plan of Sorrento-Amalfi Peninsula by Roberto Pane and Luigi Piccinato, 1968–1987 159 1 Introduction 159 2 The Neapolitan Context and the Plan Construction 161 2.1 Plan Premises 161 2.2 First Plan Drafts 162 2.3 First Landscape Plan 163 3 The Planners 165 4 The Plan 168 4.1 The Idea of “Landscape as Heritage” System 171 4.2 Farmer’s Role in Landscape Management 172 4.3 Landscape Restoration Actions 173 5 Conclusions 176 5.1 A Guarantee for Safeguarding a Precious Landscape 177 5.2 The Dynamic Landscape Conservation for Urban Agriculture 178 5.3 The Seeds of Engagement and Landscape Co-Construction 178 References 179 Productive Urban Landscapes 182 Dynamic Usonia: The Evolution of Wrightian Organic Principles for Community Sustainability 183 1 From Broadacre City to Usonia 183 1.1 Outline of Wright’s Organic Principles 185 2 Land Distribution and Spatial Freedom 186 3 Formal and Social Communal Individuality and Reintegration 190 4 The Evolution of Organic Principles 193 4.1 Plasticity and Continuity 194 4.2 Simplicity, Horizontality, and Harmony 195 5 Reenvisioning our Twenty-First Century Usonia 197 References 198 The Future Without Centralities, “New Settling” by Mikhail Okhitovich and His Proponents 200 1 Socialism without Cities 200 2 Designing the Future: Three Solutions to the Problem of Socialist Settling 201 3 Mikhail Okhitovich: An Amazing and Tragic Biography 206 4 “The Network Will Win, and the Centre Will Die” 206 5 A New Settling of Mankind 210 6 The Productive Landscape of the Future: Neither Urban nor Rural 218 7 Long-Term Forecast for Post-urbanization 219 References 221 The City in the Landscape: Alfred Caldwell’s Vision and Experiment for an Ecological City 223 1 Introduction 223 2 The Question: The Potential of Planning for Social and Environmental Transformation 225 2.1 Early Planning in Chicago 225 2.2 Mid-Century Planning in the U.S. 226 2.3 Toward an Ecological City 227 3 The Planner: Alfred Caldwell 229 3.1 Biography 229 3.2 The Origins of the City in the Landscape 230 3.3 The Meaning of Farming 232 4 The Plan: The Productive Living Landscape 234 4.1 Caldwell’s City in the Landscape 234 4.2 The Productive Living Landscape 238 4.3 The Experiment: Caldwell’s Farm 240 5 Conclusions 244 References 245 From Rural Lands to Agribusiness Precincts: Agriculture in Metropolitan Sydney 1948–2018 247 1 Introduction 247 2 Sydney’s Historical and Geomorphological Context 249 3 Background History of Western Agriculture in Sydney 249 4 Agriculture at Mid-Century 252 5 Trends in Urban Agriculture at Mid-Century 256 6 The Cumberland County Council Planning Scheme 1948 256 7 The Legacy 260 8 Sydney’s Metropolitan Planning Strategies from Late 1960s to 2010s 261 9 Greater Sydney Commission's ‘A Metropolis of Three Cities’ (2018) 264 10 Western Sydney Agribusiness Precinct 266 11 Trajectory 267 12 Conclusion 270 References 271 Brøndby Allotment Gardens: Building Social Cohesion in Danish Peri-Urban Spaces 273 1 Placing Danish Allotment Gardens in Context 273 1.1 History of Allotment Gardens in Denmark and, Briefly, Elsewhere in the World 273 1.2 Copenhagen’s System of Green Spaces 276 1.3 Inspiration from Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City Concept 278 2 Erik Mygind, Landscape Architect 279 2.1 Biographical Background 279 2.2 Productive Landscapes in Peri-Urban Areas 281 3 Brøndby Haveby 282 3.1 Overview and History 282 3.2 Specific Design 282 4 Conclusions 286 References 287 In a Crisis, Re-Start from... Patch! Possible Learnings from P.M.’s Social Ecological Utopia Bolo 289 1 Why Going Utopian to Imagine Resilience? 290 2 Pills of Systems Thinking 292 3 P.M.—A Quite Mysterious Author 292 4 Origin and Essentials of P.M.’s Utopia 293 4.1 The Bolo as a Spontaneous Basic Collective Agreement and as a Context for Life and Production 294 4.2 Realistic Food and Utopian Foodscapes 297 4.3 Possible Learnings Towards Groundbreaking Planning and Resilient Food Supplies 302 References 305 Thinking Utopia: A Resilient Approach to Productive Landscapes by Yona Friedman 309 1 The Inevitable Return of Utopia 309 2 The Forma Mentis of Emergency Times 311 3 The Emergent Patterns of Productive Landscapes in Friedman’s Oeuvre 315 3.1 Mobile Agriculture as a Means of Non-Urbanization 315 3.2 Self-sufficiency as Means of Food Security 319 3.3 Non-paternalism as Means of Pragmatic Utopia 320 4 Conclusions 323 References 324