The urban gardens in South Tyrol (IT): spatial distribution and some considerations about their role on mitigating the effects of ageing and urbanization

Interest in urban gardening is growing as a means of enhancing social contact and reusing urban spaces. This practice in fact has positive effects in social and environmental terms. Positive effects include the increased social integration of people at risk of exclusion (elderly people, above all), the reduction of anthropic pressure on natural resources (the soil in particular) as well as the green requalification of vacant spaces. Because of these effects, urban gardening has spread especially in extensively urbanized and metropolitan areas where land consumption and pollution are more intensive, and also social distress and loneliness are more diffuse. Milan, New York and Barcelona are just a few examples of large metropolises where urban gardening is widely spread. On the contrary, urban gardens are not very common in mountainous areas, within which the reduced anthropic pressure and the permanence of communities of people who still help each other act as inhibitors. The regional graphic in this paper illustrates the spatial distribution of urban gardens in South Tyrol, a mountainous region in the north of Italy. Here, urban gardens are few and unevenly distributed. They are mainly concentrated in large municipalities and the provincial capital situated at a relatively low altitude above sea level (five of the eight municipalities with urban gardens which have answered to the investigation are situated on average at 250 m). They are absent in mountain municipalities above higher altitudes (from 1000 m upwards).