Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Food Planning

Rob Roggema, Rob Roggema

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317293798
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Sustainable Agriculture
• Index: Technology & Engineering

As urban populations rise rapidly and concerns about food security increase, interest in urban agriculture has been renewed in both developed and developing countries. This book focuses on the sustainable development of urban agriculture and its relationship to food planning in cities.

It brings together the best revised and updated papers from the SixthAssociation of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) conference on Sustainable Food Planning. The mainemphasis is on the latest research and thinking on spatial planning and design, showing how urban agriculture provides opportunities to develop and enhancethe spatial quality of urban environments. Chapters address various topics such as a new theoretical model for understanding urban agriculture, how urban agriculture contributes to restoringour connections to nature, and the limitations of the garden city concept to food security. Case studies are included from several European countries, including Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Turkey and the UK, as well as Australia, Canada, Cameroon, Ethiopia and the United States (New York and Los Angeles).

1 Introduction

On the brink of why and how: sustainable urban food planning grows up

Rob Roggema

Introduction

In recent years many books on urban agriculture, urban farming, food planning or food systems have been published (De Zeeuw and Drechsel, 2015; Miazzo and Minkjan, 2013; Roggema and Keeffe, 2014; Viljoen and Bohn, 2014). However, this book Sustainable Urban Agriculture and Food Planning, marks a shift in perspective. Many discussions and the majority of the research in the past dealt with food safety and security. This book looks beyond these ‘why’ questions of the food issue, as the questions of ‘how’ to produce enough, healthy, sustainable and acceptable food close to where it is consumed and where it can be experienced, become more and more important.

Trends

Several trends regarding local and regional production of food can be identified: the scale of urban agriculture, the role of developing countries, the spatial impacts and conditions, the design outcomes, the availability of space, new concepts and new roles for the consumer.

Thinking at the city region scale

Several food-planning scales are currently used to determine the growth of food in or near urbanised areas (see Table 1.1):

1 The city region food system encompasses the complex network of actors, processes and relationships to do with food production, processing, marketing and consumption that exist in a given geographical region that includes a more or less concentrated urban centre and its surrounding peri-urban and rural hinterland – a regional landscape across which flows of people, goods and ecosystem services are managed (FAO and RUAF, 2015).

2 Food system planning is seen as an urban system (Pothukuchi and Kaufman, 1999), however the local scale is not the only scale to look at the food system (Born and Purcell, 2006), as the system is scalable, and can be analysed at higher scales, even global.

3 Urban Agriculture is defined as:

an industry located within (intra-urban) or on the fringe (peri-urban) of a town, an urban centre, a city or metropolis, which grows or raises, processes and distributes a diversity of food and non-food products, reusing mainly human and material resources, products and services found in and around that urban area, and in turn supplying human and material resources, products and services largely to that urban area.

(Mougeot, 1999)

Urban farming is the growing, processing and distribution of food or livestock within and around urban centres with the goal of generating income (Poulsen and Spiker, 2014; Thoreau, 2010).

Street food is ready-to-eat food or drink sold in a street or other public place, such as a market or fair, by a hawker or vendor, often from a portable food booth, food cart or food truck (Simopoulos and Bhat, 2000).

A street vendor is a person who offers goods or services for sale to the public without having a permanently built structure but with a temporary static structure or mobile stall (or head-load). Street vendors could be stationary and occupy space on the pavements or other public/private areas, or could be mobile and move from place to place carrying their wares on push carts or in cycles or baskets on their heads, or could sell their wares in moving buses (MHUPA, 2004; Sundaram, 2008).

Table 1.1 Types of urban food production and their typical scale

Type	Definition	Scale
City region	A more or less concentrated urban centre and its surrounding peri-urban and rural hinterland	Regional landscape
Food system planning	Planning of the food system at the urban or the local scale. The system is scalable	Urban region
Urban agriculture	Agriculture within (intra-urban) or on the fringe (peri-urban) of a town, an urban centre, a city or metropolis	Urban and peri-urban
Urban farming	Farming within and around urban centres	Urban centres
Street food	Food sold in a street or other public place	Street, public/private space
Street vendor	Person selling food on the pavements or other public/private areas, or mobile	Pavement, public area
Community garden	Shared productive land in neighbourhoods, schools, connected to institutions such as hospitals, and on residential housing grounds	Piece of land in neighbourhood

Source: Roggema and Spangenberg (2015)

Community garden/consumer collectives: a community garden is any piece of land gardened by a group of people, utilising either individual or shared plots on private or public land. The land may produce fruit, vegetables and/or ornamentals. Community gardens may be found in neighbourhoods, schools, connected to institutions such as hospitals, and on residential housing grounds (University of California, undated).

Despite an increase in local low-scale urban farming projects, such as rooftop gardens, community gardens and mobile street food entrepreneurs, a general trend to start looking at the food system at the city-region scale is visible. For instance the work of FAO/RUAF (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations/Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security) (FOA and RUAF, 2015) and IUFN (International Urban Food Network) (Jennings et al., 2015) makes clear that at this level the gains in terms of sustainability, health and efficiency could be large. At this scale the urban metabolism, or the flows of resources inside and outside of the food system, is an important issue and is very promising.

Many of the chapters in this publication emphasise the city region (Chapters 3: Leardini and Serventi; 4: Van der Valk; 5: Sanz Sanz et al.; 6: Keeffe et al.; and 14: Batcha) or food system (Chapters 2: Keeffe; 3: Leardini and Serventi; 4: Van der Valk; 6: Keeffe et al.; and 15: Lee) scales. The urban agriculture (Chapters 2: Keeffe; 7: Zeunert; 8: Mylonaki; 11: Kumru Arapgirlioğlu and Altay Baykan; and 12: Sasso) and urban farming (Chapters 2: Keeffe; 4: Van der Valk; 9: Million et al.; and 10: Buchanan) scales are also widely used in this book, while street food and vendors (Chapter 16: Jégou and Carey, regarding intermediate entrepreneurs sale in schools and land markets) and community gardens (Chapter 4: Van der Valk; and 13: Tal Alon Mozes) are only sparsely mentioned (see Table 1.2).

Table 1.2 The scales discussed in the different chapters of this book

Scale	Chapters
City region	3 (Leardini and Serventi), 4 (Van der Valk), 5 (Sanz Sanz et al.), 6 (Keeffe et al.), 14 (Batcha)
Food system	2 (Keeffe), 3 (Leardini and Serventi), 4 (Van der Valk), 6 (Keeffe et al.), 15 (Lee)
Urban agriculture	2 (Keeffe), 7 (Zeunert), 8 (Mylonaki), 11 (Kumru Arapgirlioğlu and Altay Baykan), 12 (Sasso)
Urban farming	2 (Keeffe), 4 (Van der Valk), 9 (Million et al.), 10 (Buchanan)
Street food	16 (Jégou and Carey)
Street vendor	16 (Jégou and Carey)
Community garden	4 (Van der Valk), 13 (Tal Alon Mozes)

The role of developing countries

In Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, just to name a couple of cities in developing countries, the growth of food in urban areas and slum areas is a common phenomenon (Conway, undated; Foeken and Mwangi, undated; Foeken et al., 2004; Jacobi et al., undated; Kenyan Ecotourist, 2012; Lee-Smith, 2013; Mayoyo, 2015; Schmidt, 2011). Increasingly it becomes clear that these cities should not only be seen as places where urban farming methodologies and techniques developed in developed countries could be implemented, but these cities have a large experience in organising, implementing and growing food close to the consumers. Besides the still-necessary support for the poorest people in arranging their local food supply, including set up of urban agriculture projects, these cities should also be approached as a knowledge base to learn from. The experiences in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi are widespread, as several chapters in this publication illustrate. Especially in Chapter 13, Batcha discussed the situation in Cameroon.

Spatial impacts and conditions

In urban agriculture specific fields of research have been distinct. There is a huge body of knowledge about the resource efficiency and environmental performance of urban agriculture projects (Allen, 2003; Deelstra and Girardet, 2000; Mougeot, 2010), and at the same time many scholars have studied the social impacts of these projects (De Bon et al., 2010; Mougeot, 2010; Nugent, 2000) or their sustainability (Koc, 1999; Pearson et al., 2010; Smit et al., 1996). So far, these topics have mainly been looked at from a sectorial perspective. In the current timeframe there is an increase in studies and projects that observe urban agriculture from one integrated frame. The studies carried out in Rotterdam for instance show the integration of spatial needs of urban food production with the spatial conditions and potentials in the city (De Graaf, 2011). Four types of urban agriculture (forest gardening, small plot intensive farming (SPIN), roof ...