TITLE:
Agricultural Productive Public Space: “An Alternative for Increasing Ecological Services, Social Development and Urban Sustainability”
AUTHORS:
Ignacio Carreno, Wenjun Ma
KEYWORDS:
Ecological Services, Resource Harvesting, Urban Sustainability, Urban Resilience, Urban Agriculture, Environmental Justice, Public Space, Biomimicry, CPUL
JOURNAL NAME:
Current Urban Studies,
Vol.7 No.4,
October
11,
2019
ABSTRACT: The problems affecting major cities are expected to increase under the
pressure exerted by climate change, population growth and the incremental nature
of urban consumption. Therefore, it becomes necessary to increase urban
sustainability and resilience in a way that improves the urban landscape and
the lives of urban communities in the aspects of economic income, food
vulnerability and the limited access to environmental justice. This study lays
the ground basis for the consolidation of a new typology public space through
urban agriculture on its different modes (geoponics, aquaponics, geoponics and
hydroponics) and derived activities that address the needs of urban centers as
it harbors environmental and urban improvement in a profitable way for the
stakeholders involved in continuous productive urban landscape. Through a
multi-cluster quantitative, and design research, this paper collects the
different modes, urban agriculture can be employed in cities and describes a methodology
for establishing an agricultural productive public space within the
participation of communities, and how it can widen the spectrum of public
participation based on a followed-up case study with a community located in the Huangpu district, adjacent to commercial and
tourist activities in Shanghai, China. The results of this research represent a methodological approximation for the formalization of the local spatial
development with a focus on the participatory approach, for the
sake of increasing urban sustainability along with the socioeconomic needs of
neighboring communities. The results also evidence the state of consciousness
that architecture graduate and postgraduate students have about environmental
limits and their conception for the creation of urban value in terms of sustainability.