Nuovi modelli abitativi negli ambiti periurbani. Critica al concetto di agrivillaggio New Housing Models in Peri-urban Areas. Critique of the Concept of Agrivillaggio

This essay aims to delineate a few specific criteria to plan a rural-urban settlement, often called “agrivillage”. The urban phenomenon that characterized the Italian situation after World War II, even if it has suffered decelerations during some temporal phases, is still generating strong competition on agricultural land uses, especially in periurban areas, the purposes of which remain uncertain. They are usually referred to as “urbanized-countryside” or “sprawling cities” in order to stress their transitory process. It therefore seems necessary to adopt a radically different point of view in designing urban settlements. What has been previously expressed allows us to recognize the potential for a fruitful relationship between those rural and natural elements ever more requested by the urban population and those areas at the edge of urban fringes of urban sprawl. The dissatisfaction due to the relentless spread of the city at the expense of the rural territory and the attractiveness of the periurban countryside, it has however, caused mixed reactions. In addition, the time seems ripe for testing of settlement patterns more in tune with the social and environmental scenarios that lie ahead for the future, perhaps not so far away, where one can no longer rely on familiar ways of providing resources necessary for our subsistence. It is therefore necessary to think of many alternatives. The scenario that we will discuss, in accordance with the first hypothesis mentioned, is the proposal of a settlement model for new forms of living space in rural areas. We aim at presenting one of the ways by which this order can be achieved: agrivillages in periurban areas as alternative models to the more or less intensive urban transformation operating at the edge of the city. It is a new kind of settlement, both agricultural and residential, and it is characterised by a dimension of food and energy self-sustenance. Its goal is to create a new settlement starting from the morphological and productive organization of farm land. The agrivillage represents an interesting settlement model able to redefine periurban landscape as well as an opportunity to give a concrete answer to the utopic goal of an urbanized countryside.