DES Padova - Let's save the landscape

Let's save the Landscape in Padua and its Province

Monday, June 11, 2012, 8:30 p.m. - Cinema Multiastra
Via Tiziano Aspetti 21, Padua

“LET'S MEET IN A NEW LANDSCAPE”
Project presentation evening
“Metropolitan agricultural and landscape park between Brenta and Bacchiglione”
and the book “Save the Landscape”
Present was the author Luca Martinelli, Altreconomia journalist

Padua, 28 May 2012 — The Save the Padua Landscape coordination launches the proposal for the establishment of a metropolitan agricultural and landscape park between Brenta and Bacchiglione.

“Save the Padua Landscape” was born within the “Italian Forum of Movements for the Earth and the National Landscape” and is promoted, among others, by DES - District of Solidarity Economy of Padua, a network of associations and cooperatives in Padua. The Park's proposal aims to enhance the valuable naturalistic areas and the network of watercourses, the environmental and landscape values of the countryside.

The presentation meeting is scheduled for Monday, June 11 at 8.30 pm at the Multiastra cinema in Padua and will be an opportunity to propose to citizens a reflection on the state of our health of the territory, in relation to the topic of the consumption of fertile soil for the benefit of urbanization and concreting works.

Program:

- Presentation of the book “Save the Landscape”
Luca Martinelli — Altreconomia journalist and author of the book
- Presentation of the project “Metropolitan Agricultural and Landscape Park between the Brenta River and the Bacchiglione River”
Sergio Lironi, honorary president of Legambiente Padova and member of the organizing committee
Coordinated by Matteo Sandon, DES Padova.

The event is part of the national campaign “Save the Landscape - Let's Defend the Territories”, which invites all municipalities to take a census of how many empty and unused houses and industrial buildings and how many building areas (residual and new) there are today within municipal boundaries, to understand if urban policies are responding to the needs of citizens or if they are simply sacrificing free land and landscape.

“As Padua's Solidarity Economy District (a group of associations and cooperatives committed to building virtuous relationships between producers and citizen-consumers who live and share the same territory), we feel at the forefront of the call to support all those deserving small producers who resist cultivating and safeguarding the last hectares of land saved from the unregulated concreting that has affected our territory, especially in the last twenty years.

Therefore, we cannot remain indifferent to the data published by the Save the Landscape initiative these days.

Summarizing the most significant: in the last 30 years, given a very low growth (tending to zero) of the inhabitants, the territory of the Municipality of Padua has been cemented on average for 70 hectares per year (industrial areas, commercial areas, ring roads, new residential developments, etc.), with numbers increasing sharply in recent years; - by default and in the province of Padua alone, there were more than 23,000 apartments on the market, empty and looking to be rented or sold; to which are added more than 1,300 industrial warehouses, just as empty and looking to be rented or sold.

All this seems absurd even in light of the latest Censis-ANCI report on the Italian real estate market, which predicts not only a further significant reduction in the volume of sales; but also a probable drop in property values from 20 to 50%; and also that soon the average Italian family will probably transform from a typical buyer to a seller of real estate.

Despite this scenario, in Padua people continue to talk senselessly about: new lots in Camin; new lots in the Parco Basso Isonzo area; new lots in the Parco Iris area; new lots in the “former Seminary” area in Tencarola; the new allotment planned in the loop between Bacchiglione and Brentella, just to name a few.

If we then look outside our Province, the following projects have started, or are in the phase of advanced study, the following projects: Veneto City; Motor City; truckable on the Padova-Venice Waterway; new Romea Commercial Road; City of Fashion; once again just to name a few.

Despite the crisis, concreting knows no stop, instead of engaging in the recovery and enhancement of the existing building stock, the dominant thought always seems to be that of consuming more land at the expense of the little green and the little arable countryside left; with the aggravating factor, in many cases, of using renewable energy (often misusing its incentives), as a mirror for larks.

Interventions aimed at saving energy and developing renewable energy are fine, but studied and applied to existing building stock, whose volume is already well beyond the needs of the population and the capacity of the territory.

We therefore believe that we citizens must do something to try to curb this process of depletion of our territory that has been going on for many years and which seems to know no brakes.”

Throughout the evening at the Osteria di Fuori Porta (next to the Multiastra cinema), local, organic and supportive menu proposals in support of the initiative.

DES-District of Solidarity Economy of Padua is a network formed by different, democratic and socially motivated economic initiatives, rooted in the territory, which have started a discussion to get to know each other and make themselves known, to trigger new, coordinated and participatory economic processes and to spread them. It includes: Bio Rekk, Coop. The Thames, Coop. Angoli di Mondo, Mani Tese, Altragritura, A.C.S., Ass. AIAB Veneto, Git Banca Etica, Legambiente Padova, Macondo fair trade ice cream, Mellarius Apitura.