In Livorno, as throughout Italy, there are numerous spaces, both land – public or private – and structures at different construction phases, left in a state of neglect for years. The area where the Parco degli Orti Urbani stands is a land of about 6 hectares between via Goito, via dell'Ambrogiana, via dell'Erbuccia, via Corazzi and via da Verrazzano, historically used for arable land (until 1973), then transformed into a service area and, finally, into a building area on 20% of the total.
From that day to today, the property has been followed by 6 building cooperatives. We would like to emphasize that all these companies have failed in the task of re-evaluating the territory, despite the conversion of this land to building, in fact none of the projects presented to the municipal administration – including sports facilities, shopping centers, residential buildings, roads, parking lots – has ever started. In fact, the last and only use for which this land has been used is cultivation. Coop Italia, the penultimate of the cooperatives that followed the ownership (and owner at the time of occupation), went bankrupt bringing with it about 30 million euros of debts to shareholders, suppliers and banks: it is difficult not to include this land among those targeted by building speculation.
In over 30 years of neglect, a land located in the center of Livorno, historically used for crops and subtracted from citizenship to carry out works never started, has been left in a complete state of neglect, thus turning into a sterile thicket of brambles and weeds, where not used as an illegal landfill until the time of occupation by the precarious and unemployed committee of the former barracks in October 2013.
Today this land, the Parco degli Orti Urbani, houses about 120 small gardens managed by as many users of the park who thus have the opportunity to obtain a small indirect income by growing vegetables. In this year and a half of coexistence around the gardens, a refreshment area has arisen, with barbeque, clay oven and entirely self-built tables, a children's playground, a straw amphitheater where theatrical performances are held, a common garden from which anyone can pick vegetables with the formula "I take something – I sow something". About 80 fruit trees were planted. The park also houses a collective living work where everyone can give free rein to their creativity, a forest of Mediterranean scrub, a bush and a reed bed that host and allow the nesting of different species of birds. The botanical route can be visited thanks to the availability of some botanists. Every day there are hundreds of Leghorn who benefit from this common good, its spaces and its products and more and more are the proposals for social aggregation that are advanced by the collective and by citizens of Livorno who wish to carry out their outdoor activities: weekly the park hosts a yoga course, periodically theater workshops, vegan-raw foodist-fruitarian cooking classes, Permaculture courses and we are planning the creation of "Diversamente Orti", a project that aims to create raised gardens, suitable for the use of those who are confined to wheelchairs. (Parco degli orti urbani di Livorno, 2015)