Speakers
Description
At the threshold between city and countryside, peri-urban spaces embody a complex interplay of tensions and possibilities. These territories, caught between land speculation, environmental degradation, and urban expansion, are also sites where alternative food futures are being envisioned. The case of Carpaneda, Vicenza (Italy) exemplifies this duality. Here, a grassroots movement—Assemblea per Cascina Carpaneda Bene Comune—has been reclaiming an abandoned public farmhouse and its surrounding land as a peri-urban agroecological commons. Their vision is to transform Carpaneda into a House for Agroecology, a place where food, knowledge, and social justice converge, laying the groundwork for a future Agricultural Park for the City of Vicenza.
The Assemblea per Cascina Carpaneda Bene Comune emerged in 2023, building on a process initiated in 2020 by the local activist group CVA – Comunità Vicentina per l’Agroecologia (CVA). In response to municipal plans to sell off Cascina Carpaneda and its adjoining land, CVA mobilized to oppose privatization and advocate for its recognition as a common, recognizing its ecological, agricultural, and social value. Over the following years, their efforts sparked broader interest and engagement, drawing in citizens, farmers, researchers, and local residents. This growing movement eventually led to the formation of the Assemblea per Cascina Carpaneda Bene Comune in 2023, consolidating the collective struggle to reclaim and protect the area. Since then, the Assemblea has woven a network of alliances, linking farmers, ecological organizations, and urban movements, while engaging in public actions, institutional negotiations, and collective knowledge production. Their approach extends beyond resistance; it is an affirmative reimagining of urban-rural relations, grounded in biodiversity conservation, agroecological practices, and community-led governance.
In 2024, to reinforce this vision and contribute to the Carpaneda Ecofestival, the Assemblea—together with La Piccionaia—joined forces with local and international researchers to launch CARPINO (CARPaneda for INclusion and Observation of biodiversity changes). CARPINO is a transdisciplinary citizen science initiative, designed to co-produce knowledge and support the movement’s demands for land protection and commons-based governance. Funded by the HorizonEU project IMPETUS, the project bridges scientific inquiry, oral history, and artistic practice, forming a collective experiment in socio-ecological transformation.
Through a science camp, CARPINO applies participatory research to assess soil health, biodiversity, and water quality, generating community-owned environmental data to inform advocacy efforts. The school of oral history amplifies the voices of the human inhabitants of the area, directly impacted by the marginalization process that affected the Carpaneda area, documenting their relationships with the land and its transformations. Meanwhile, the artistic laboratory engages participants in creative explorations of human-nature entanglements, fostering deep connections and new imaginaries for the site’s future.
Beyond knowledge production, CARPINO is a tool for political mobilization, strengthening alliances between grassroots movements, scholars, and policymakers. By positioning agroecology as both a scientific practice and a socio-political movement, it challenges hegemonic urbanization patterns and advocates for commons-based governance models that resist land speculation and industrial expansion. Ultimately, CARPINO contributes to territorial food sovereignty, reclaiming peri-urban spaces as key sites of ecological resilience, social justice, and food system transformation.
This contribution situates agroecology as a counter-hegemonic planning tool, one that reconfigures urban-rural relations through bottom-up governance, participatory planning, and the recognition of food as a vehicle for socio-ecological justice. By examining the case of Carpaneda, it explores how peri-urban agro-ecological corridors, city-region food systems, and collective land stewardship can serve as models for more just and sustainable urban futures.
| Keywords | Peri-urban commons, grassroot initiatives, citizen science, transdisciplinary alliances, Vicenza |
|---|---|
| Best Congress Paper Award | No |
