Greening Rome - Global Rome: Changing Faces of the Eternal City - page 250

lowed the development of a rural world functional to the economy of urban cen-
ters yet distant from them both culturally and socially.
if the development of agricultural activities for commercial purposes out-
side the urban limits in the technologically advanced, industrialized western
world is a modern occurrence, informal farming within cities and peri-urban ar-
eas is still practiced in most of africa, south america, and asia (Cole et al. 2008;
Dubbeling et al. 2009; liu et al. 2005; Gonzales-Novo and murphy 2000). The
vegetable gardens in many backyards tended by migrant families in the united
states are evidence that the majority of people outside western europe and the
united states see urban farming as nothing new (bevilacqua 2008). indeed as a
Chinese grandmother asked when visiting the university town in iowa where the
author was living in 2008: “why do all these people [mostly white americans]
use their gardens only for growing inedible plants?”
urban agriculture in the western metropolis
The international literature on the topic is growing fast (smit et al. 1996; pothu-
kuchi and Kaufman 1999; Jacobi and Dresher 2000; beatley 2000; fao 2000,
2011; halweil 2002; feenstra 2002) but a major inventory of european, u.s., or
australian experiences has yet to be made. systematic information on urban ag-
riculture systems, actors, and trends in europe and elsewhere is therefore lacking
and the existing evidence is mostly anecdotal. This is not to say that there are
no groups, formal and institutionalized, working on developing and support-
ing urban agriculture. The Civic trust in london, the Bundeskleingartengesetz
(the federal law for allotment gardens) in Germany, the european support Group
on urban agriculture, the european Coordination of Gardeners associations,
the international Coalition for local environmental action, and the european
league of local authorities are just a few examples of local- and state-supported
institutions interested in promoting community gardening in particular and ur-
ban agriculture in general in major european countries. in france, for example,
urban gardening is facilitated by the state. The so-called jardins partagés (shared
gardens) have become a consolidated reality since 1997 thanks to the Charte
main Verte (Green Charter) that allows the utilization of municipal land by as-
sociations of citizens for six years. accordingly, the city provides water and pot-
ting compost while the residents manage the garden, including opening hours
and the organization of a social event once a year (Jardinons ensemble 2013). The
example of france is currently being exported to other countries as distant as
New Zealand and the united states, where, increasingly, local administrations
try to foster and regulate urban farming.2 modern urban agriculture is a global
movement whose origins in the industrialized west go back to the 1800s, in part
connected with factory workers for whom home gardening was seen as a supple-
ment to their salary and in part as an aesthetic solution to blight.3 The City beau-