Towards productive and socio-natural urban landscapes : tapping urban agriculture’s potential as a tool for sustainable development

Abstract

Worldwide, the percentage of people living in urban areas will increase from 50% in 2010 to nearly 70% by 2050. While in many parts of the world, human development is expanding rapidly on the urban fringe and at the expense of rural hinterlands, some cities decided to focus on densifying the built environment.

Since densification leads to a quantitative reduction of open spaces, the pressure on the remaining ones is significantly increasing. On the one hand, open spaces should meet the requirements of its users, on the other hand, they have to fulfil expectations regarding climate adaptation and operating efficiency. Thus, to satisfy these claims, urban open spaces have to be endowed with multi-functionality.

Urban agriculture, in turn, offers indispensable opportunities to solve - or at least deal with - urban challenges regarding sustainability, health, economy, society, urban design and local food supply. Due to its cross-cutting and multi-dimensional nature, it has the potential to meet a good many of requirements on open spaces. Nonetheless, it still inherits a rather low visibility on the agenda of urban planners.

This situation could stem from various reasons, whereby a gap in the understanding of urban agriculture’s capability seems to be a major cause. To this day, there exists no comprehensive literature on the subject - neither a holistic view on urban agriculture’s multifaceted benefits nor its impacts on urban open spaces. Thus, the purpose of this study is to tap urban agriculture’s potential and to emphasise its raison d’être in sustainable urban planning.