New Productive Landscapes: Designing for Sustainable Urban Food
Abstract
As of 2008 over half of the world’s population is now living in cities, and the number is expected to swell to approximately five billion in the next twenty to thirty years. As the volume of people living in cities rises, so does the amount of food that must be imported into these urban areas. These imports consume energy at a rate that is far beyond sustainable. The costliness of this transportation results in rising food prices. This in turn leads to a host of other problems and issues. Urban agriculture, though historically nothing new to cities around the world, is at the very heart of solving these issues. This work focused on the effect that landscape architecture can have on urban agriculture. It examined different solutions that could increase the viability and sustainability of farming in the city, in particular it dealt with the issue of finding space for agriculture. Using the case study method as well as assessment measures that deal with the viability in an urban environment, this work dealt with whether or not integrating urban agriculture with city parks could increase the viability and sustainability of the practice.