5591_SCA_Diego_Ciapetti

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Smart-villages and Smart-gardens Abstract: Smart-village is a new way to think about small and middle sized cities.

In the future the main part of global population will live in big metropolitan areas, which are attracting new investments and becoming the so called "Smart-cities".

For the small towns the competition will become unbearable; reshaping their economic model is essential, starting from a new concept of agriculture.

In the countryside around some cities of central Italy this process is already started some years ago. Some families have discovered the pleasure of cultivating medium-sized pieces of land in innovative ways. The "Smart-gardens" network supplies the city with fresh food and renewable energy; it represents a channel parallel to the traditional mass food-supply and makes people less money-dependent. If this solution would be adopted in large scale, it could create a new agricultural, social and urban model, as well as an extraordinary risk management opportunity in agriculture.

Author

Diego Ciapetti

Smart-villages and Smart-gardens 1. My proposal is based on a vastly shared vision about urbanization: for the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. By 2030 this number will swell to almost 5 billion; mega-cities have captured much public attention (also the European Union has started important investments about the so called “smart-cities”), on the other hand, smaller towns, which contain the other half of the population, have fewer resources to respond to the magnitude of the change. Big cities offer a more favorable setting than rural areas: generate more jobs and income, present opportunities for social mobilization and they can deliver education, health care and other services more efficiently than less densely settled areas. The challenge for the next few decades is learning how to exploit the possibilities urbanization offers, and this process can’t exclude the relaunch of rural areas and small cities. Small towns should became the means for implementing a new model of agriculture, based on mass participation of the citizens, resource sharing and sustainability, toward a new concept of town: the “smart-village”, in contrast with the well-known notion of “smart-city”. The analysis is geographically focused on the rural areas of south and central Europe, where intensive agriculture is already showing problems of productivity and depletion of soil. The ideal concept of smart-village is a town where all the services should be accessible by walking or riding a bicycle, moreover, a concentrated urbanization allows to develop an efficient network of public transportation and stimulates the social life of people. This model is strongly in contrast with the common situation of urban sprawl, that consumes large portions of land and increases the car dependence.

2. My proposal starts from these broad considerations, and was elaborated to be inserted in a big picture of “modern urbanization”. In the future, the economic development model for small cities will change drastically, all the factories and service industries will move to the major cities, where the competition about better services and human capital will be unsustainable for small cities. To avoid this mass migration toward the big “smart-cities”, small towns should reorganize themselves, proposing a new economic impulse for the sector that “smart-cities” never could embrace: agriculture. “Smart-village” is a new concept of city, positioned in the centre of a rural area that became an integrated network based on agriculture.

3. The agriculture of tomorrow will consist of coming back to the past for many aspects, that’s a point very shared among the scientific community, but the “smart-village” vision gives a concrete interpretation of how this will happen: a sophisticated network of gardens surrounding the town. An ideal size for one of these gardens should be 3 hectares, let’s now indicate that as “smart-garden”, because it’s very different from the vegetable-garden we use to know positioned behind the house. Smart-gardens are the most important tools that permit to the smart-village to work and being almost self-sufficient, about energy and food supply.

Figure 1: Example of smart-village and its smart-gardens network

Figure 2: Umbertide view

To give concreteness to the concept of smart-garden, there will be showed a real example of it, located few kilometers from Umbertide,

a

small

city

(17000

inhabitants) in central Italy. Umbertide fits all the considerations to be a future candidate

smart-village.

Its

main

resource is the fertile countryside area around. Where is possible to see concrete

examples of smart-gardens: during the last years many peasants have abandoned the intensive agriculture because of the meager earnings, while many factory-workers have recently loosen their job; however Umbertide continues to be a rich and very active city.

Many people have rediscovered the pleasure of cultivating gardens, demanding smallmedium pieces of land.

4. The smart-garden in question, taken as a real example, has a structure reported in figure 1 (lower part) and described more in depth by the following bullets: Woods.

Indispensable timber,

source

obtained

cleaning

of Figure 3

from

the

woods

periodically, then it can be used

as

biomass

fuel

for

the

central

of

the

town. In addition, trees offer a natural wind barrier and isolate the fields from plants epidemics and insects invasions (reducing the chemicals typically used in big monoculture fields).

Fruit trees and other cultures.

A large part of the garden is cultivated

Figure 4

using an innovative approach that can be traced to the concept of “conservation agriculture�. It consists of reducing the use of the plow while bio-diversity of soils becomes the key factor to increase productivity

and

control

erosion.

The

alternation of different crops, which absorb nutrients from the soil in varying amounts, allows the reconstitution of its natural endowment and also limit the spread of diseases.

Open field.

Part

of

the

garden

is

cultivated as a normal field, utilizing a small tractor. It the “smart-

shows that

Figure 5

garden” is a ductile model, complementary with the existence of big farms and intensive agriculture, even if the tendency should be a progressive migration

to

the

conservative

agriculture.

Hen house.

Hens

are

very

establishing

a

helpful

for

convenient

biological cycle; they eat any kind of

agricultural

residues,

like

vegetables and fruits gone bad. A hen house like the one in the photo

requires

very

Figure 6

little

attentions, so it should be considered an essential component for a “smart-garden”.

Outbuilding.

The “smart-garden” is also a place where people go only for the pleasure to stay in contact with nature, that’s why in Umbertide these

places

have

became

barbecues points equipped with many comforts, like TV, fridge, water etc.

Figure 7

A

smart-garden,

like

the

one

presented, easily feeds two families, in addition is an energy source, thanks to small installations of wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, and providing wood for the local biomass power plant.

Figure 8

Smart-village could attract people who don’t like the pollution and chaotic rhythm of big cities, the smart-gardens network offers precious independence from the usual mass food supply, so the people involved become less money-dependent. The industrial vision of agriculture has finished its cycle, a new pattern is taking place, therefore this new interesting economic model should be studied with attention.

Diego Ciapetti (diego.ciapetti@gmail.com)