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Urban Agriculture as a Tool for Adapting Future Cities

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Resilient and Adaptive Tokyo

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Abstract

Urbanization, industrialization, and improvements in transportation have meant that most produce (fruits and vegetables) no longer needs to be produced within the cities where they are consumed. It can be more efficient to grow food intensively and on a large scale in rural areas. The separation of agriculture and cities raises issues about energy consumption for transport and massive use of pesticides and fertilizers in rural areas while the loss of farmland reduced food security in overcrowding cities. The benefits of urban agriculture have been attracting more attention in recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. While the capacity of urban agriculture is limited yet, it can indeed provide beneficial ecosystem services such as supplying healthy and fresh vegetables to urban dwellers, mitigating heat island and climate change, offering recreational opportunities, and alleviating disaster risks, etc. Japan’s Basic Act on the Promotion of Urban Agriculture, enacted in 2015, recognized the importance of urban agriculture. This chapter will first review the trends and related policies of urban agriculture in Japan, and then introduces the services and functions of urban agriculture in Tokyo from the urban planning perspective.

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Acknowledgments

This chapter was supported by the JSPS KAKENHI [grant number JP22J13885]; and the Belmont Forum’s Sustainable Urbanization Global Initiative (SUGI): Food-Water-Energy Nexus/M-NEX project [grant number 11314551, Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST): 1009781].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan

    Keidai Kishimoto

  2. Faculty of Environmental Information Studies, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan

    Wanglin Yan

Authors
  1. Keidai Kishimoto
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  2. Wanglin Yan
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Correspondence to Keidai Kishimoto .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Facultiy of Environmental Information Studies, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan

    Wanglin Yan

  2. Department of Architectural Science, Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    William Galloway

  3. Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan

    Rajib Shaw

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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Kishimoto, K., Yan, W. (2024). Urban Agriculture as a Tool for Adapting Future Cities. In: Yan, W., Galloway, W., Shaw, R. (eds) Resilient and Adaptive Tokyo. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-3834-6_9

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