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Urban Agriculture—Towards a Continuous Productive-Space System in the City

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Urban Visions

Abstract

Urban Agriculture is not a new term in the history of urbanism. Many experiences have tried to include agriculture in the field of town planning, with very interesting initiatives in the first decades of the twentieth century or by the proposals for ‘protection and management of agricultural areas in metropolitan environments’ developed more recently. Bringing the dimension of agriculture to consolidated urban areas has undergone spectacular development over the last ten years, because it is accompanied by the growing concern for urban sustainability and the subject of feeding cities. Moreover, for urban planners, the strategies of ‘continuous productive urban landscapes’ (CPULs) that aim to introduce coherent productive interconnected spaces inside cities as an essential component or sustainable urban infrastructure, become a great innovation when designing open-space systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “The sum of all land and water required to meet material consumption and waste discharge of a defined population is that populations’ ecological footprint of different on the earth” (Deelstra and Girardet 2000, 44).

  2. 2.

    Around 2.2 million inhabitants. And in smaller Cuban towns, this percentage reached between 80 and 100%. It is estimated that the island has around 33,000 allotments dedicated to urban and suburban farming.

  3. 3.

    In 2000, the consultants Best Foot Forward, pioneers in ecological footprints, estimated that Londoners consumed 6.9 million tonnes of food, of which 81% came from outside Great Britain. See exhibition leaflet London Yields: Urban Agriculture. 9 April–30 May 2009. London.

  4. 4.

    Urban Agriculture: Food Jobs and Sustainable Cities is based on a number of studies carried out between 1991 and 1992 by Jac Smit, Joe Nasr and Annu Ratta, financed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The results of these studies were published in this book in 1996, by UNDP as a contribution to the UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II). The book was subsequently reprinted in 2001.

  5. 5.

    Some other notable examples are the exhibitions: Bohn and Viljoen (2011b), Lee-Smith (2009) and Nasr and Komisar (2014).

  6. 6.

    In this CPUL concept, urban agriculture mainly refers to fruit and vegetable production, since these products produce a higher yield per cultivated hectare. The effect of this type of action on cities has qualitative effects for citizen experiences and quantifiable effects in terms of reducing the negative impact of cities and towns.

  7. 7.

    The All London Green Grid considers creation of a green infrastructures network in Greater London and brings to light the considerable sensitivity to ‘green’ and towards production landscape in the approach, which has been documented in many recent papers. Consult: Draft Supplementary Planning Guidance published by the Greater London Authority in November 2011, for the public consultation process.

References

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Further Readings

  • Imbert, D. 2010. Aux Fermes, Citoyens! In Ecological Urbanism, ed. M. Mostafavi, and G. Doherty, 256–267. Cambridge: Harvard University Graduate School of Design—Lars Müller Publishers.

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  • Lee-Smith, D. 2009. Carrot City: Designing for urban agriculture. Urban Agriculture Magazine 22: 43–44.

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  • Nasr, J., and J. Komisar. 2014. Displaying Urban Agriculture: From Garden City to Carrot City. In Exhibitions and the Development of Modern Planning Culture, ed. R. Freestone, and M. Amati, 277–292. Farnham: Ashgate.

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  • Primdah, J., and S. Swaffield (eds.). 2010. Globalisation and Agricultural Landscapes. Change Patterns and Policy trends in Developed Countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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  • Smit, J., J. Nasr, and A. Ratta. 2001. Urban Agriculture. Food, Jobs and Sustainable Cities. United Nations Development Programme.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Architecture (EINA), University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    Pablo de la Cal

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  1. Pablo de la Cal
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Correspondence to Pablo de la Cal .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    Carmen Díez Medina

  2. School of Engineering and Architecture, University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain

    Javier Monclús

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de la Cal, P. (2018). Urban Agriculture—Towards a Continuous Productive-Space System in the City. In: Díez Medina, C., Monclús, J. (eds) Urban Visions. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59047-9_32

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