The following post is a writeup created for “Magyar Urbanisztikai Tudásközpont Nonprofit Kft./Hungarian Urban Knowledge Centre (www.mut.hu)” providing case-study research surrounding the topic of sustainable city developments.
Site Source: Sustainable Cities Collective
Article Title: Urban Agriculture- A Next Big Thing for Cities
Author: David Thorpe
David Thorpe petitions that urban agriculture and vertical farming are means to establishing more sustainable and innovative alternatives for improving metropolitan food security. David Thorpe analyzes the Sky Greens in Singapore as a case study to research the potential of vertical farms within urbanized environments. Vegetables are grown within towers that are approximately nine meters high and provide vegetable production while mitigating the usage of water, electricity and land that are typically association with food production. Singapore imports most of its food and this a way the city can become sustainable and self-sufficient through food production.
David also noted that today’s cities are unsustainable. He mentioned the reason for the collapse of past cities such as Jericho and Babylon were caused by environmental pressures. He questions the reader to discover how we can avoid having our current cities collapse as well? We need to understand how to utilize the potential of cities from further damaging the earth’s ecosystems. We need to start incorporating hydroponics, aeroponics and drip irrigation within our urban design and planning schemes. The possibility of using abandoned buildings for indoor growing strategies is one way to begin increasing the usage of vertical agriculture within cities. Obviously it’s critical to start analyzing potential solutions to creating more sustainable cities with the incorporation of urban agriculture.
URBANISM 