Smart-villages and Smart-gardens

Diego CiapettiAuthor

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.

Abstract:

BCFN Young Earth Solutions YES!

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.

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

Figure 1: Example of smart-village

and its smart-gardens network

Figure 2: Umbertide view

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 small-

medium 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 source of

timber, obtained from

cleaning the woods

periodically, then it can be

used as fuel for the

biomass 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

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.

Figure 3

Figure 4

Open field.

Part of the garden is

cultivated as a normal field,

utilizing a small tractor. It

shows that the “smart-

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 helpful for

establishing a 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 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 5

Figure 6

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.

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)

Figure 8