Integrative approach to productive urban landscapes: the case of Porto city

Abstract

We start by acknowledging the potential of two specific urban blocks in Porto, the 12 casas block (between Rua da Alegria e Rua de Santa Catarina) and the Fontinha block (between Rua de Santa Catarina and Rua do Bonjardim). These are two of the biggest blocks of the city. Consequently, they have the largest open inner-soil. These private plots are remnants of the 19th century city structure were each inner plot of land was used to cultivate food for the houses’ inhabitants. Today, they are mostly abandoned and are defined in Porto’s master plan as places for “urban development”. This implies that they are available land to build buildings and roads. Under the argument of opening the inner-blocks to increase public space, these great free land will became fragmented in small gardens or parks. In this process their fertility value for cultivation is replaced by the market value for building. This paper questions this embedded urban planning idea “that unbuilt soil is soil available to be built”. We defend that this is an anachronic idea, supported by the continuous process of expanding the urban over rural land, and the densification of the city, by building in almost every “available site”. Secondly, we look to the past of Porto’s city to demonstrate the historical evidence of an existing productive landscape in which there is a close connection between the buildings and inner-plots for familiar agriculture. Thirdly, we explain how the two blocks presented in the first section have already in themselves the seeds of potential for an integrative approach to an urban productive landscape, that connects the inner-space of the buildings with the open-space of the plots, generating a process of transformation that may be expanded at the scale of the city. Two experiences are already being practiced in these blocks: one is Quinta das Musas, a collective association that has been progressively cultivating the inner land of the blocks gathering several plots belonging to various landowners; and the other, a pilot project “FARM” that aims to integrate pioneering research trades with the cultivation of the land and the potential for public use. Since ancient times, soil´s value was dependent on its fertility. When urban planning policies and master plans label a plot as an “urban space with x capacity to be build”, the price of land is abruptly inflated. City is a collective space and the distortion that the classification of urban soil has in its value, must be faced critically. This mindset needs to be reframed, in an era were climate change and the quality of life in cities, including the environmental one needs to be faced seriously. An integrative approach to productive urban landscapes that connect the local with the local, (“zero” distance between consumption and food production, for instance) and the local with the global is a challenge second to none.