中欧社会论坛 - China Europa Forum

Authors: Jorge Manuel Frazão Cancela, Landscape architect / Environmental manager

Date: 9 juin 2010

Published by The case presented is a partnership between: a civic ecology NGO: AVAAL a landscape architecture / environmental management office: BIODESIGN Both are based in Lisbon, Portugal. AVAAL is a newly created (2009) NGO whose mission is societal development trough environmental improvements in local community, BIODESIGN is an experienced (since 1991) environmental consultancy which works in Portugal and Portuguese-speaking countries.

Portugal was known as an agricultural country, but the reality is now far from that. In 2001, according to the official statistics (INE, 2009) the active working population in the agricultural sector was less than 5% of the total active population in the country (it was 48% in 1950). No wonder then that the Portuguese agricultural production in 2008 is less than 20% (in weight) of the total of agricultural products consumed in the country (INE, 2009).

However, for thousands of years, Mediterranean landscapes have been deeply associated with agricultural uses. With the actual reduction of agricultural activity, it’s not only the rural economy that has declined but also the biodiversity, being well recognized the role that non-industrial agriculture has for the region’s environmental balance. But the “urban+services” magnet continues to have a great influence on land-use patterns and on the loss of population and investments in the rural realm.

Food production was an important issue in Portuguese economy and regional planning until mid-XX century, even in peri-urban areas; the strong urbanization process that began by that period changed the focus and agriculture was since felt as a rural issue and accordingly, almost no more considered as a urban function.

But agriculture has not disappeared in the city just because urban planners were not considering it; in fact, on the opposite, agriculture always had territorial and social expression in the Portuguese cities and conurbations, even after the mid-XX century.

In Portugal the tradition of green spaces in towns expresses itself more strongly since the XVI century with the “quintas de recreio” that surrounded the city center, providing it with fresh vegetables and fruits; cereal fields, olive orchards, vineyards and the raising of small cattle completed the overall picture of peri-urban agriculture, with the centers of production and consumption very close and well connected.

Until the middle of the XX century that relationship between the city and its agricultural periphery was a major feature of the concentrated urban form. With the growing of the city limits and the internal migration from rural to urban areas, some of the new settlements were designed for those rural migrants, creating small private productive areas linked with the individual housing functions.

In the seventies, with the degradation of the economic situation and the returning of many Portuguese families from former Portuguese provinces in Africa, some shantytowns grown in the periphery of the cities with small and degraded agriculture sites nearby; those were made on a subsistence basis, some times vary badly tended, irrigated with sewage water and without any ecological or aesthetic value; we assume that for many people the messy image that they might still have about “urban agriculture” originates from this situation.

Today, with most shantytowns already transformed in planned urban areas, is the work of the immigrants from former Portuguese speaking-countries in marginal areas (roadsides, as the most notorious) that constitutes for the average citizen eyes, the biggest expression of informal urban agriculture in towns.

However, the biggest urban agriculture areas are normally in ancient farms, former agricultural fields or big valleys, well inside the urban core, like the Chelas valley area, in Lisbon.

There are for some years now a great number of initiatives involving the creation of small-scale pedagogic kitchen-gardens in the open spaces of schools; one of the most known and coherent is the program “Biological agriculture and composting in schools”, run by the Municipality of Moita, since 1999.

Another initiative is the municipally-owned and managed sites for public acess to the or “Pedagogical allotments”, where the public can visit and learn farming techniques or even farm their own plot; “Olivais Pedagogical Farm”, in Lisbon, is one of the first examples (since 1996) of the first situation, and the “Social and Pedagogical Allotments” of Guimarães (since 2008) of the second. Both are very well known locally, with a great number of visitors the first and farmers the second.

Other situations are consequence of social housing operations, that involved the destruction of informal urban agriculture sites, replaced afterword by a planned space; one of the examples of this situation is the “Bairro do Ingote”, in Coimbra, where the municipality, with the technical support of the Agrarian Superior School of Coimbra, created in 2004 an allotment area; the success of that operation is pushing those entities to create more of those spaces through the city.

Another example is designed public parks that contain an area for kitchen-gardens or allotments; almost all of them recent, one good example is the “Bela Vista Urban Park” at Cacém, Sintra’s municipality. But maybe the older program of planned area for UA is one in Azambuja, where for now more than 60 years, “social allotments” are run by the local municipality, and still in use.

One of the most famous, widespread and well implemented urban agriculture programs is the one conducted by LIPOR (the intermunicipal agency for solid waste in the Porto’s area); the “Horta à Porta” (Kitchen-garden at the door) program began in 2003, has already 12 allotment areas in function, with a global area of 2,5 ha; in each allotment every user takes care of 25 m2 in organic ways of production.

In Lisbon, two big UA areas are being organized by the Municipality, but in areas where there’s already informal agricultural occupation in Chelas (15 ha), and Benfica (3 ha); other UA areas will be organized or created in other parts of the city.

One of these will be in the area known as “Alta de Lisboa”, the biggest planned urban area in Portugal (350 ha), where from the organization of local residents an “urban agricultural park” of 3 ha is about to born, with the support of the local community institutions, local promoters and the Municipality, in a truly bottom-up successful approach. Other initiatives are already implemented, or about to begin, all over the country, in a very positive moment and movement for the recognition of the environmental, economic and social values of planned UA programs.

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