The debate between the Councilor for Green Policies of the City of Rome, Ms Laura Fiorini, and the representatives of the city’s urban gardeners associations is in progress: the City Administration has launched the new rules for urban gardens and shared them with the City Districts before proceeding with their approval by the City Council. The rules have nevertheless encountered some confusion and disagreement among the representatives of the urban gardeners associations.
Some of their claims are the fact of not having been consulted in the design phase of the new rules, the introduction of the payment of a yearly fee by the gardeners to the City Administration and the complex bureaucratic process to identify and assign new areas for urban gardens. The position of the City Administration is that the symbolic fee of €50,00 a year for two hectares of land is to comply with the legislation on concessions and expenses can be deducted from this amount. According to Councilor Fiorini the assignment method of the loan, present in the Regulations of 2015, does not favour the phenomenon of urban gardening as it is equivalent to a temporary and precarious loan. The process of identification of land by the gardeners has remained the same, while only one article has been added for which the City reserves the possibility to put out to tender pieces of land identified by the City Administration in order to spread the practice of urban agriculture throughout the city.
The debate shows the passion of citizens for the topic of urban agriculture in Rome as well as the complexity of its management in the pursuit of reaching a result that can ensure a real added value both in terms of environmental and sustainable development policies for the city and of citizen participation.
