Agricultural landscape in periurban mediterranean contexts: The case of Greater Sousse (Tunis)

Abstract

The protection of peri-urban agriculture through the zoning of certain land as undevelopable by urban and spatial planning instruments is insufficient in the face of strong pressures from residential, industrial, infrastructural and sometimes tourist uses that make it fragile. This text addresses the potential of landscape to activate this type of agriculture under direct urban influence and applies the Landscape Character Assessment as a systematic methodology for the identification and characterisation of peri-urban agricultural landscapes in Greater Sousse, the main urban and tourist agglomeration in the Tunisian Sahel, with a view to their evaluation, management and promotion. The notion of landscape character is adopted and related to public policies for the management of Tunisian peri-urban agricultural spaces and social perception, through interviews with a sample of local and regional actors. Landscape diversity is analysed in the form of Periurban Agricultural Landscape Areas (PALA), characterised on the basis of their particular physiognomy, and their main elements and past and present functioning. The study concludes with the proposal of a landscape project as green infrastructure, which implies a conflict management model in accordance with the needs of the landscape, of the farmers and of the population that perceives and uses it as an open space, strengthening its function as a producer of quality and proximity food, as an exercise of participation and territorial governance.