Abstract

In Poland, the topic addressing urban areas of agricultural production and gardening activity is still viewed in two main blocks: 1) a shift of the urbanized zone’s boundaries, causing dispersion of suburban buildings as well as creates conflict zone between the residential area and the production and post-production zones; 2) a socially contentious issue of restructuring the inner-city complexes of former employee allotments. The article develops a conversation with the third block – urban gardening, understood as a revitalization tool – introducing a discussion on the city’s potentials, a perspective for alternative developmental scenarios within a metropolitan area. Threads of a metropolitan policy SMART have been collated with developmental potentials of the ‘slow life’ attitude and philosophy. The thesis was supported by the results of a study-research project titled: “SlowSmartOrunia: SlowLife in SmartCity”, carried out in the form of urban mentoring. Metropolization in Poland is plane of urban debate which revises the region-city-village relation. Urban agriculture has been the password triggering revision of the current modernization and development paradigm. The paste 25 years of the organizational and spatial changes implies the urban community’s growing interest in the SLOW mainstream. It combines unexpired Polish tradition with a new trends of western metropolises. Redefinition of the developmental targets and the methods, striving to reduce stress resulting from accelerations in technological and economic development. The need to maintain a secure sustainability in social development, responsible for the so-called urban resilient, that is, flexible resistance to the changes in developmental conditions. Smart City, while improving communication between the residents, should open developmental channels of new forms of codecision-making (creative planning and governance) and co-responsibility adequate to the contemporary pace and lifestyle. Mobilization of the city’s newly developed endogenic potential is meant to increase all the parameters hidden under the term ‘sustainable development’. Alternative strategies implemented in order to strengthen the social and cultural capital, here, gain special importance. Urban forms of plant cultivation, as tools for strengthening communities, are perceived as the symbol of change.

Author (1)