Modern rural-scape and contemporary ideology: The case of the Pontine Plain

Abstract

The Pontine Plain exemplifies the controversial shift from the Modernist radical attempt to reshape the landscape and the likewise radical return to bare nature of recent decades. The wildest European landscape extended very close to Rome for many centuries, until the Fascist Swamps Battle invented the Agro Pontino. Recently, marshy places have been recreated as plant-based sewage-treatment facilities, mimicking natural plots, into the Thirties’ grid. So, while the Fascist remediation deleted the swamp’s ecological thickness, lately no less doctrinal positions plead for the atonement of its ecocide. Today the Plain is a huge agricultural area undergoing changes: wetlands sometimes emerge through the grid of roads and Eucalyptus-lines, side by side the agricultural fields, dotted with industrial plants and weekend-home resorts, while local people use canals and floodable areas for leisure time, suggesting unpredictable new rural/urban/wild public spaces. How can we deal with this dynamic landscape and combine rural fruitfulness, historical heritage, ecological culture and new ways of living? We propose a general strategy, inspired by the Italian ancient agricultural practice of the marcite, and introduce productive wetlands, combining the bold 1930s’ layout with wetlands wig-wag; the farm production with new social behaviour; the historical identity with ecological processes. The aim is to overcome the cliché of dualistic opposition (water/land, marshes/farming, settlements/wilderness) in favour of coexistence, overlapping, simultaneity, negotiation.