A research project led by Professor of Geography at the University of Valencia Joan Romero demands that the new government of the Generalitat Valenciana “urgently” activate the Territorial Action Plan for ‘l’horta’, traditional peri-urban vegetable gardens, “according to criteria of governance and social consensus”. The findings of this study have just been published in ‘WIT Transactions on Ecology and the Environment’.
The essay on the Mediterranean ‘horta’ addresses the planning and management of peri-urban agriculture and its cultural landscapes, and underlines “the carelessness of the authorities involved” in the preservation of these territories, “given the absence of territorial planning and management at the regional and local scale, the neglect of coordination mechanisms at the metropolitan level, the scarce profitability of agricultural activities and the inexistence of a territorial culture”, explain Romero and Carme Melo, from the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in South Korea, in the text that was presented at the 7th International Conference on Sustainable Development and Planning, held last May in Istanbul.
The future of ‘l’horta’ is “uncertain”, according to these scholars, for the confluence of several processes such as “a decrease of cultivated land, pollution, infrastructure plans, urban sprawl, profitability loss, low guarantee of generational renewal and abandonment of material heritage”.
For these reasons, the paper proposes a number of recommendations in order to reverse the process of decline experienced by peri-urban gardens. Joan Romero believes that, in the first place, it is “urgent that the public sector gets involved through effective, coherent and sustainable policies, as well as through planning at the metropolitan scale, which requires bringing the Territorial Action Plan for ‘l’horta’ – now paralysed by the regional government – back to the political arena and promoting it at the regional level and with the support of the municipalities affected”.
Multifunctional agriculture
Professor Joan Romero warns that the protection of peri-urban vegetable gardens also requires increased public information, new conceptions of territory, water and landscape, and greater public awareness. It is in this context that “the idea of a multifunctional agriculture becomes relevant”.
The future of ‘l’horta’, according to Melo and Romero, also depends to a large extent on a strong civil society that sees these genuine spaces as part of their collective history and “is able able to look into the past and towards the future with respect and sensitivity, being aware that landscape and territory do not have masters and that humans are not the centre of nature”.
Joan Romero is a Professor in Human Geography at the University of Valencia and a member of the Interuniversity Institute for Local Development (IIDL), where he served as first director until January 2008. He teaches in the degrees in Political and Public Administration Sciences, Journalism, History and Geography. He also gives lectures in the Master’s Degree in Development Aid of the IIDL and has been a visiting scholar at the School of Geography of the University of Leeds.
His teaching and research activity in recent years has focused on the field of political geography, public policy, the structure of the state and new forms of territorial governance in Spain and Europe. Among his most recent works it is worth highlighting ‘La Huerta de Valencia. Un paisaje cultural con futuro incierto’ (PUV, 2012), written in collaboration with Professor Miquel Francés, and ‘Democracia, políticas públicas y gobierno local ante el nuevo ciclo político’ (PUV, 2015), along with Professor Andrés Boix.
‘Spanish Mediterranean Huertas: Theory And Reality In The Planning And Management Of Peri-urban Agriculture And Cultural Landscapes’. J. Romero, C. Melo. WIT Transactions on Ecology and The Environment. Vol 193. DOI 10.2495/SDP150501
Last update: 3 de october de 2015 07:00.
News release
