The Region

The Valley of the Po River, located between  the cities of Brescia, Bergamo, and Milan, serves as a prime example of a landscape that is seeking to adapt to climate and economic changes through solidarity-informed agroecology practices that benefit people, the landscape, and society.

The Local Landscape

The Solidarity Landscape Living Lab is a partnership between the University of Maryland with a charitable co-housing community in Lurano, Italy, called Villaggio Solidale, and its sister site, Corte dei Massari, ten kilometers away in the village of Castel Cerreto. These communities offer housing, educational, and social services to children in foster care, adults with disabilities, young adults, and single-parent families.

The Landscape History

In antiquity, this landscape was said to be occupied by Lake Gerundo, a massive, shallow lake surrounded by wetlands and forests. The legend says the lake was home to the mythological dragon Tarantasio.  The lake is said to have been drained during Roman times and in the Middle Ages to make room for agriculture, therefore taming the water, the landscape, and the dragon.

Tarantasio became the symbol for the project, serving as a metaphor for a renewed ecology where nature and humans co-habited the landscape. 

The Fontanili

While the Gerundo lake has dried up, water remains an important part of this landscape, either contained in canals or springing from the earth in the Fontanili, remnant ecological patches of natural springs.

The springs are formed from runoff from the Alps. Water travels underground through gravelly soils until it reaches areas with less permeable clay soil,  where it bubbles to the surface. Over the centuries, people have tapped these springs and used them for irrigation and recreation.  Today, the fontanili have gone mostly extinct, with only a few of them remaining in our project area.

The Challenges