Land Use
The nature of the estate is fundamentally urban and none of the land is reserved for significant agriculture or other exploitation of natural resources. The city state displays an impressive degree of land economy, born of necessity due to its extremely limited territory. Thus, the urban development (i.e., buildings) is optimized to occupy less than 50% of the total area, while the rest is reserved for open space, including the Vatican Gardens. The territory holds many diverse structures that help provide autonomy for the sovereign state, including a rail line and train station, heliport, post office, radio station (with extraterritorial antennas in Italy), military barracks, government palaces and offices, public plaza, part of an audience hall, old defensive wall marking the border, institutions of higher learning, cultural/art centers, and a few embassies.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Vatican City
Famous quotes containing the word land:
“croppers rotting shacks
with famine, terror, flood, and plague near by;
where sentiment and hatred still held sway
and only bitter land was washed away.”
—Margaret Abigail Walker (b. 1915)
“I see an America whose rivers and valleys and lakes, hills and streams and plains; the mountains over our land and nature’s wealth deep under the earth, are protected as the rightful heritage of all the people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)