Agriculture in the Mediterranean Urban Phenomenon: Rome Foodscapes as an Infrastructure

The lack of productive land, unstable local food markets, food insecurity, uncontrolled urban growth and conflict in land use within urban areas all fuel the debate on city and food in times of change. The aim of this paper is to explore the agricultural context of Rome, focusing on its relationships with development in the metropolitan area, within the framework of sustainable food planning. At the same time, the foodscape, as a part of the Mediterranean urban environment, requires to be defined and assessed in terms of the roles involved, which are not simply limited to the provision of food. Agricultural land plays a key role in the Mediterranean context; the challenge, therefore, is to integrate agriculture with urban development in the practices of regional organisations and in local public policies over the long term. In this frame, the case of Rome is interesting for several reasons. First, Rome is the largest city in Italy in terms of surface area and population, and was the largest agricultural municipality in Europe until 1992, when Fiumicino became a distinct municipality. The special features of Rome are also concerned with the extent and size of settlement development. Two thirds of the urbanised land has been built up over the last fifty years, mostly on agricultural land. Despite this, the last census data showed that urban farms increased by 44% and agricultural land by 16% over the last decade (ISTAT, 2011). Starting from the relationship between food and city, we have mapped the landscape, identifying a number of representative conditions - typologies - in the metropolitan area of Rome. Through a complex system of criteria - relationships with the urban fabric, production patterns, flows, services, infrastructures, environmental characters, social behaviour linked with the production - the study tries to summarise Roman agriculture. We focus on a set of recurring elements, involving both criticalities and opportunities, that bring together city and food production. All these relations explain and direct the move from agricultural use of land close to the “city”, to an infrastructure that can direct metropolitan development.