The ethics and aesthetics of allotment gardens

Abstract

Since the ‘70s of the twentieth century, with the contribution of Rosario Assunto, landscape becomes a comprehensive and inclusive concept, in which is inherent the experience of the space. For this author landscape is an aesthetic reality that we contemplate living in it. This definition is shared by Ferriolo that adds to that definition that the aesthetic experience is inseparable from life: the contemplation is the concrete action and involves the landscape, the architecture and the city. In the landscape is reflected the free creative action of man - the landscape is a art product, and of a human action aimed at changing the nature, towards the good and the beautiful. This is a reality that is not only aesthetic but also ethical, because it is linked to an action, to a project of the human being entered in the environment and in the community that evolves him. Considering this idea of space as vital experience, as fundamental in the concept of landscape, it is our aim to address, ethically and aesthetically, allotment gardens as a space of the landscape, which includes, in fact, the living experience, even when is just contemplated. In Portugal, with the migratory movements of the '60s and '70s, the runout of the population from rural areas towards the cities, led to the emergence of certain forms of urban agriculture that responded to a new kind of urban space, which demonstrated a link between the new industrial population and the memory of their old habits in rural areas. Currently, allotment gardens remain, with great expression, occurring in spaces of different locations, in well defined, or not, types of spaces, but all with an exceptional interest as a sociological phenomenon. In this paper will be used, as a case study, the allotment gardens of Lisbon and the work that has been developed to regulate, to develop and to include these spaces in the city planning, both in terms of ethics - social, environmental, emotional and economical aspects - both in terms of aesthetics - namely its importance in the urban regeneration and city design.