Towards an Urban Tomato Unsuspected relations in metropolitan gardening Forewords
Plan of the first Babylon settlement.
1  It reached maturity by the sixth century B.C. after invading what we now call the Classical Greece. They had no fortifications, and constructions used to be open to the landscape. Gardens were either patios, or planted for fruit.
What humankind used to do the best, is struggling to survive. When necessities are incumbent, then wit takes form in the right place and time. While defending the revolution, in the socialist Cuba during the crisis following the collapse of the Soviet Union, efforts were made to reach a self-sufficiency that would permit the island to be independent from the rest of the world. The task has not been fully accomplished yet, but so far incredible results have been reached. One of those is the emergence of Urban Agriculture, as answer to the food shortage. The city of Havana, and others as Cienfuegos or Rodas, have incorporated in their urban structure production fields that not only provide nourishment, but also enrich the landscape and function as magnets of a communal sense of participation. To demonstrate how relevant this phenomena is, and how it should be taken in consideration while planning the future urban growth, we will take a brief tour through the history of gardens and landscape design. Present examples, then, will give us an insight of the contemporary relation between
urban life, its contemporary characteristics and natural landscape. In this scenario, to locate the case of La Havana will clarify the relevance of its Spaces of Production.
From Babylon to Central Park Between the two rivers Tigris and Euphrates the science of Agriculture lead the flourishing of a landscape otherwise hostile. Protected by walls and irrigated by channels, gardens were seen as representations of paradise, adored as miracles and trees venerated as gods. In the pre-Columbian America the approach was one of respect towards the landscape, influenced by topography and then scattered and fragmented. In the lowlands as much as in the mountains, the effect of landscape interventions was one of an engineering fully related to the site. In Crete, where a free thinking society was growing, all architecture was composed to natural landscape, and fundamentally angle-viewed1. A Natural value acknowledged even by Plato as helpful to learning and an instinctive planning that con-