Ecology of Hortus Conclusus: The Idea of Self-sufficiency from the Greek Polis to the Fascist Housing to the Green Deal

From the end of the 17th century, with Cartesian thought and then the Second Industrial Revolution, cartographic representation changed and, consequently, so did the construction of the territory. Following the Second Industrial Revolution, the creation of the great energy network constitutes an important watershed, from material infrastructure it becomes a new cultural model. It marks the opening of a progressive distance between the individual and doing, between production and widespread skills. Dependence on large production systems, i.e., on the network, makes both the built heritage more vulnerable and individuals, rendered incapable of directly providing for their livelihood and thus more vulnerable. The process of progressive lengthening of production chains has been matched by a gradual human alienation from the environment as a habitat. The “strategic” model adopted by the European directives pursues the framework of remote, abstract enactment, inscribed within the present capitalistic models of growth, which is substantiated through a system of mandatory deadlines leading to the goal of “Transition”, a rapid and efficient response but not designed for long-term effectiveness, as the term itself witnesses. On the opposite side, Transformation would instead presuppose a radical and permanent change of the status quo, possible only through what Michel De Certeau calls ‘Tactics’, i.e., a capillary model that starts from the bottom. The article proposes to reopen the notion of sustainability by identifying a double ideological and methodological grid. On the one hand the transition scenario proposed by the Green Deal through the system of Strategies. On the other, an alternative scenario of active adaptation, aimed at a permanent Transformation, using the tool of Tactics.