Changes in Vision - Urban Landscapes: Environmental Networks and Quality of Life - page 57

Fig. 6.4 Märkisches Viertel, Reinickendorf, Berlin. Example of urban agriculture near the
Senftenberger Ring. Photo by Vittorio Vidotto
furnishing opportunities for recreation, environmental education, and life
outdoors, the improvement or urban landscapes, … [20].
In reality, the urban garden has always been present in the history of Italian
cities. Perhaps the historic minimum occurred in the 1960s, when the cultiva-
tion of gardens within the city began to symbolize an inferior social and eco-
nomic condition, an element of landscape degradation. The rebirth of interest in
garden cultivation coincides, instead, with the economic crisis that hit Europe
in the 1980s. However, at the base of current amateur garden cultivation, there
is not so much the need to be economical, but rather the desire to “know what
we are eating.” It is precisely in the last 20years that there has been a rebirth
of an old institution, the “garden without a home,” i.e. gardens located within
the urban fabric that do not belong to those who cultivate them, but to associa-
tions or administrations that assign them to nonprofessional growers.