The City as an "Agricultural Powerhouse"? Perspectives on Expanding Urban Agriculture from Detroit,Michigan

In recent years urban agriculture has received increasing support as a strategy for food security and urban sustainability. Scholars have explored motivations for and experiences of individual community gardens, but there is little understanding of how more extensive urban agriculture activities might be perceived among residents or might integrate with the cityscape. This research explores ways in which urban agriculture might be perceived in relation to the urban eco-system and sociopolitical context through semi-structured interviews and focus groups in Detroit, Michigan. Results reveal widespread support for expanding urban agriculture and highlight the lines along which such expansion may be contested, including the extent to which it should occur, the purpose it would serve, and the people it would involve.     

The role of local government in promoting sustainable urban agriculture in Dar es Salaam and Copenhagen

As a multifunctional activity and land use, urban agriculture supports a range of objectives, from urban greening to food security. However, it is often left out of urban policy. As a result of the highly contextual and cross-cutting nature of urban agriculture, there are relatively few comprehensive and formalized regulatory tools to draw from. Different cities around the world are now deciding how to fit urban agriculture into the urban agenda; however, in many places urban agriculture continues to operate in the absence of legitimization due to its relatively mobile and dynamic nature. This article looks at the importance of local and central governments in promoting sustainable urban agriculture. Through participatory action research, it examines the cases of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Copenhagen, Denmark to understand stakeholder interactions, as well as present and future barriers to the conservation of existing urban agriculture and future initiatives. The findings suggest that municipal recognition and institutional support for urban agriculture is an important component in increasing the sustainability of related initiatives. Local and central government plays a role in the legitimization and institutionalization of urban agriculture through the facilitation of multi-stakeholder processes, policy development and the conservation and allocation of land.     

URBAN AGRICULTURAL ACTIVITIES AND WOMEN'S STRATEGIES IN SUSTAINING FAMILY LIVELIHOODS IN HARARE, ZIMBABWE

The growing of crops on open and undeveloped spaces within urban zones in eastern and southern African cities has become an important source of food security. Urban populations have expanded without a corresponding increase in economic opportunities for employment. Economic reforms have led to the removal of subsidies on food commodities and retrenchments in the formal employment sectors. It is reported that a result of this is that vulnerable households have resorted to urban agriculture to sustain their livelihoods. Though a widespread practice, urban agriculture is not planned for or supported by urban planners and managers as a legitimate form of urban land use in Harare, Zimbabwe. As women are the main participants in urban agriculture, their activities come into direct conflict with planning provisions for urban space. This study examines the role of women in urban agriculture and views and perceptions of the use of urban space for agricultural activities in Harare. It shows that urban agriculture is useful in meeting household food needs by those who undertake it. The study offers empirical insight on the perceptions of the use of space in an urban tropical environment for agriculture, where conflicts can arise as a result of different perceptions and alternative uses.     

都市农业加工型企业的发展机理与模式

都市农业是城市化进程中崭新的农业形态,但缺乏对其组织形式和生产方式的实证研究。本文基于对互润(国际)食品集团的调查实例,详细分析了都市农业加工型企业的成长机理,指出制度平台、政府行为和社区沟通是企业发展的外层机理,是企业平稳运行的基础;生产经营活动及其不断的扩张构成了企业发展的内层机理;创新和企业管理及市场的内、外部控制所形成的内核机理是企业发展的核心动力。据此,文章总结了都市农业加工型企业的发展模式,并就都市农业加工型企业如何发展提出了建议。     

Uneven urban metabolisms: toward an integrative (ex)urban political ecology of sustainability in and around the city

ABSTRACT

Expanding cities present a sustainability challenge, as the uneven proliferation of hybrid landscape types becomes a major feature of 21st century urbanization. To fully address this challenge, scholars must consider the broad range of land uses that being produced beyond the urban core and how land use patterns in one location may be tied to patterns in other locations. Diverse threads within political ecology provide useful insights into the dynamics that produce uneven urbanization. Specifically, urban political ecology (UPE) details how economic power influences the development decision-making that proliferate urban forms, patterns of uneven access, and modes of decision-making, frequently viewing resource extraction and development through the urban metabolism lens. The political ecology of exurbia, or, perhaps, an exurban political ecology (ExPE), examines the symbolic role nature and the rural have played in conservation and development efforts that produce social, economic, and environmental conflicts. While UPE approaches tend to privilege macroscale dynamics, ExPE emphasizes the role of landowners, managers, and other actors in struggles over the production of exurban space, including through decision-making institutions and within the context of broader political economic forces. Three case studies illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of these approaches, demonstrating the benefits for and giving suggestions on how to integrate their insights into urban sustainability research. Integrated political ecology approaches demonstrate how political-economic processes at a variety of scales produce diverse local sustainability responses.     

可持续饮食系统的尺度逻辑——基于中国、巴西、南非的案例

农业工业化和“去地化”的生产模式、不透明的流通过程以及膨胀的消费欲望致使饮食系统危机不断,其可持续性成为全球尺度的挑战。当前饮食系统的可持续性研究面临尺度问题,涉及从全球地方的目标转化,以及从地方到全球的经验反馈两个方面。首先,全球尺度的可持续目标宏大包容,但是对地方尺度的差异性缺乏关照。其次,部分西方国家的可持续实践垄断了经验表达,过于重视社区等微观尺度而忽略了其他尺度的潜在作用,引发“尺度陷阱”。本文深入剖析中国、巴西、南非的饮食系统内部各类参与者的可持续性建构,提出全球和地方可持续饮食系统互动的尺度逻辑：① 从全球到地方的目标转化需要兼顾地方差异。中国、巴西、南非各自生成优先的可持续目标,分别针对食品安全、食物原真性和食物浪费、结构性的食物匮乏等问题。这些目标之间充满张力和博弈,不能等同替代。② 从地方到全球的经验反馈需要打破西方经验赋予的微观尺度的优越性,转向跨尺度的实践。发展中国家的可持续实践路径的要义在于发挥饮食系统各类参与者的能动性,调动资源形成有效的跨尺度行动网络。③ 发展中国家的经验表明尺度本身是方法,而不是目的,每个具体的可持续目标与适切的尺度方法匹配。有必要研究建议挖掘多元、差异的可持续模式,更加有针对性地促进当地乃至全球饮食系统的可持续发展。     

Cultivating the sustainable city: urban agriculture policies and gardening projects in Minneapolis,Minnesota

In the past 20 years, municipal governments across the United States have increasingly tried to incorporate environmental efforts into city business and policies. Urban sustainability has become the key concept around which such activities are organized. Official sustainability plans are most often implemented through indicators and metrics. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, urban gardening, in a variety of forms, has been the focus of ongoing citizen- and NGO-led environmental efforts, as well as municipal measures of sustainability. Here, debates around the recent adoption of a city urban agriculture policy, as well as a program to encourage the installation of raingardens in neighborhoods across the city, reveal some of the rich variations in gardening practices and spaces. These far exceed the relatively narrow official focus on sustainability indicators. Better understanding how urban sustainability initiatives might work with, but also move beyond, indicators may provide directions toward wider visions of sustainable urban life.     

Urban agricultural activities and women's strategies in sustaining family livelihoods in Harare,Zimbabwe

This article examines the interplay of changes in urban environments, economic reforms and women's strategies in sustaining family livelihood through a case study based on the survey of off-plot urban cultivators in Harare, Zimbabwe. It also exemplifies the nature of gender-based conflicts arising from varying perceptions of the uses of open urban spaces. This article is organized into four sections. The first section briefly discusses some contemporary issues regarding urban agriculture in eastern and southern Africa. Specifically, it examines the role of women and the conflicts that arise over the use of urban spaces for agricultural activities from the perspective of women's struggle and strategies for sustaining family livelihood. The second section gives some background to urban agriculture in Harare, emphasizing the contribution of urban agriculture to women's strategies for maintaining household food and cash income security as a response to economic reforms and how this comes into conflict with Harare City Council's view. The third and fourth section discusses the results of the survey of urban agriculturists, illuminating how female participation in the activity has distinctive motivations and contributions to the household and the urban economy. Finally, the conclusion outlines the challenges to city planning in a tropical country faced with demand for agricultural use within the urban environment.     

Handbook of applied spatial analysis: software tools,methods and applications,edited by M.M. Fischer and A. Getis

With the rising oil prices, climate change, and the ever increasing burden of nutrition-related disease, food security is of growing research interest in academic disciplines spanning agronomy to epidemiology to urban planning. Some governments have developed progressive policies encouraging individuals to consume locally produced foods in order to support local economies, improve agricultural sustainability and community access to food, and to plan and prepare for adverse environmental impacts on food security. However, fundamental methods are lacking for conducting research on food security across these various disciplines. In this article, we first present a method to measure agricultural self-sufficiency, which we refer to as our self-sufficiency index (SSI) for the province of British Columbia, Canada. We then present a Bayesian autoregressive framework utilizing readily available agricultural data to develop predictive smoothing models for the SSI. We find that regional capital investment in agriculture and cropland acreage is the strong predictor of SSI. To accommodate spatial variability, we compare linear regression models with spatially correlated errors to less traditional spatially varying coefficient models, and find that the former class results in better model fit. The smoothed maps suggest that relatively strong self-sufficiency exists only in subset clusters in the Okanagan, Peace River, and lower mainland regions. In spite of policy to promote local food, the existing local agricultural system is insufficient to support a large-scale shift to local diets. Our approach to estimating neighborhood-based self-sufficiency with a predictive model can be extended for use in other regions where limited data are available to directly assess local agriculture and benefit from explicit consideration of spatial structure in the local food system.     

“Building glass refrigerators in the desert”: discourses of urban sustainability and nation building in Qatar

Planners around the Arab Gulf states are increasingly drawing on narratives about “urban sustainability,” despite the fact that the explosive growth of urban centers in the Arabian desert largely defies the logic of sustainability. In this article, I consider how and with what effect these narratives have been deployed by various actors in Doha, Qatar. Eschewing a simple economistic reading, I highlight political geographic context and analyze how actors mobilize and rework these discourses. Drawing on mixed-methods fieldwork in Fall 2013, I illustrate how sustainability narratives are mobilized together with nationalist tropes about modernizing Qatar and building up the country’s international prestige, while preserving local traditions and culture through the built environment. With a focus on recent efforts to green Doha, this analysis sheds light on the disciplining function of nationalist discourses in the production and constitution of what it means to label development practices “green” in contemporary Qatar.     

SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE: ITS STATUS QUO AND TREND IN CHINA

I.IntroduchonTl1eacademic,scientificandpolicymaldngcommunitieshavefocusedconsiderableattentionontheconcePtofsustainabledeve1opmentSustainabledevelopmwtisdefinedas'developlnentthatllleetstheneedsofthepresatfwithoLifcon1prol1hsingti1eabilityoffLifuregenerationstomeetthoseofthefLlture'[26]Alnonghun1anneeds,themostessentialforthepresoforthefuturearefoodandfibre,theproduCtsofagnculture.Atthesan1etime,agriculturehascausedwidespreadenvironlllentalchange,whichhasafeedbacktoitssustainability.Itisnot…     

Food gardens as important elements of urban agriculture: Spatio-developmental trends and future prospects for urban gardening in Czechia

The main research goals of the article are to explain the historical context of urban food gardens in Czechia, to describe the current spatial pattern of allotment gardens, and to introduce and analyse recent trends in urban gardening. The main method for achieving the first goal was a literature study. For the second goal, geographical mapping and analysis of data relating to the spatial distribution of allotment gardens were used. For the third goal, mapping together with analysis of semi-structured interviews carried out in community gardens in Prague were used. The analysis showed a strong tradition of urban agriculture and urban food gardening activities in Czechia. Both allotment gardens and newly emerged community gardens were concentrated mainly in the biggest cities and in areas with a rich industrial and mining tradition. This finding supports the significance of gardening as an important element of urban agriculture. However, uncertainty regarding land tenure and long-term sustainability were among the greatest obstacles for the future of allotment and community gardens. The authors’ main recommendations are that urban agriculture should be included as primary land use in sustainable planning and there should be broader community involvement in planning and decision-making processes.     

MAKING SUSTAINABLE CREATIVE/CULTURAL SPACE IN SHANGHAI AND SINGAPORE*

ABSTRACT. Shanghai and Singapore are two economically vibrant Asian cities that have recently adopted creative/cultural economy strategies. In this article I examine new spatial expressions of cultural and economic interests in the two cities: state‐vaunted cultural edifices and organically evolved cultural spaces. I discuss the simultaneous precariousness and sustainability of these spaces, focusing on Shanghai's Grand Theatre and Moganshan Lu and on Singapore's Esplanade—Theatres by the Bay and Wessex Estate. Their cultural sustainability is understood as their ability to support the development of indigenous content and local idioms in artistic work. Their social sustainability is examined in terms of the social inclusion and community bonds they engender; environmental sustainability refers to the articulation with the language of existing urban forms and the preservation of or improvements to the landscape. Although both Shanghai and Singapore demonstrate simultaneous precariousness and sustainability, Singapore's city‐state status places greater pressure on it to ensure sustainability than does Shanghai, within a much larger China in which Beijing serves as the cultural hearth while Shanghai remains essentially a commercial center.     

From market to multifunctionality? Land stewardship in Australia

Recent assessments of Australia's land and water resources have revealed widespread patterns of serious decline, much of it directly associated with agricultural practices. The environmental degradation associated with agriculture has both biophysical and socio-economic underpinnings. While there have been calls to attend to the sustainability 'crisis' of Australian agriculture, policy settings remain firmly locked onto a productivist trajectory. We consider the implications of contemporary policy settings for farmland sustainability against the background of debates as to the meaning of 'multifunctionality'. The discussion is then turned to the Land Stewardship project, a strategic policy initiative within the State of Victoria that was looked to as a means of redressing environmental degradation in agricultural landscapes while also being attentive to rural community and economic issues. Towards the end of the paper we reflect on the question of how the Land Stewardship project aligns with theorizations of multifunctionality.     

北京市县域都市农业可持续发展水平动态分异与提升路径

促进都市农业可持续发展是当前加快新型城镇化进程,统筹城乡一体化发展的重要举措。本文以北京都市农业为研究对象,综合都市农业可持续发展能力时间变化轨迹刻画和空间分异格局归纳两个视角,解析都市农业影响因素的共栖关系和互动效应,结合地区特点提出合理的提升路径,以期为北京都市农业的科学发展提供科学支撑。研究表明：资源环境本底仍是制约北京都市农业发展的关键瓶颈,城镇化和工业化对北京都市农业发展影响具有两面性,宏观经济环境变化中北京都市农业显现出异常的敏感。基于研究结果,提出了促进北京都市农业可持续发展的对策建议：依托资源环境优势,拓展都市农业发展空间;瞄准城市发展需求,提升都市农业产品层次;顺应经济发展趋势,创新都市农业服务体系;创新经营管理体制,培育新型农业经营主体;发掘政策调控潜力,强化都市农业示范作用。     

Connecting Local to Global: Geographic Information Systems and Ecological Footprints as Tools for Sustainability

Tools that support public engagement with sustainability are essential for local sustainability planning. This research investigates the ability of two geographic information system (GIS)-based tools to promote discussion of sustainability in a suburban context. A local ecological footprint tool and a community environmental atlas (an environmentally themed online mapping system) were created for seven suburban boroughs of Montreal. Variations of both tools have been used to support sustainability efforts, but their use has not been widely evaluated. Working from a public participation GIS (PPGIS) framework that recognizes the powerful influence of data representation, this research uses focus groups to evaluate how well these tools address three criteria that have emerged from the literature on public engagement in sustainability: interdependency across systems, reflexivity about personal and social decision making, and interactions across spatial scales. Whereas the atlas remains advantageous for discussing local spatial specifics, it was found that the ecological footprint helped people see the interconnections among systems, integrate local and global aspects of sustainability, and reflect on the values and assumptions underlying current social and economic structures.     

传统农业地区能值生态足迹分析——以贵州省从江县为例

传统农业生态系统正面临着来自现代化发展及其带来的技术经济变革的严重威胁,在一些传统农业地区现代农业替代传统农业已经引发了严重的生态环境问题。生态足迹,作为可持续发展评价的方法之一,由于无法全面衡量人类活动对生态系统造成的各种影响,因此无法揭示传统农业地区真实的生态环境状况,也无法给出科学合理的可持续发展评价。能值生态足迹是对传统生态足迹的一种改进,试图利用能值分析理论的优点囊括人类利用生态系统产品和服务的各种活动。然而,目前能值生态足迹研究往往受到传统生态足迹理论的局限,无法真正将人类消费的各种资源、产品和服务纳入进来。为此,本文将生态系统服务概念引入能值生态足迹理论框架中,进一步改进和完善了能值生态足迹模型,使之能够全面衡量人类活动的生态环境影响。本文利用改进的能值生态足迹模型,以我国传统农业地区贵州省从江县为例,开展生态环境状况评估和可持续发展评价。结果表明,从江县2007年人均能值生态承载力为9.3311 ha,人均能值生态足迹为14.5638 ha,人均能值生态赤字为5.2327 ha。可见,从江县的生态承载力仅能满足当地居民消费总需求的64%,当地处于不可持续发展状态,生态环境状况不容乐观。这与传统生态足迹的评价结果差异十分显著。传统生态足迹评价结果显示,从江县的生态承载力不仅能够满足当地居民的消费需求而且有少量生态盈余。进一步分析显示,从江县居民对生态系统的污染物吸纳服务和侵蚀控制服务的消费,在从江县总生态足迹中占有相当大的比例。这说明,从江县传统农业生产方式受现代农业影响而发生的部分改变,所产生的生态环境影响已经逐步显现。过量施用化肥农药所引起的面源污染以及频繁翻耕和砍伐森林所引起的水土流失,已经严重威胁当地的生态环境健康和可持续发展。     

Relational Agriculture: Gender,Sexuality, and Sustainability in U.S. Farming

Although 97% of U.S. farms are “family-owned,” little research examines how gender and sexual relationships – inherent in familial dynamics – influence farmers’ practices and livelihoods. Gender and sexual dynamics – shaped by race and class – affect who is considered a farmer, land management decisions, and access to resources like land, subsidies, and knowledge. We use feminist and queer lenses to illuminate how today’s agricultural gender and sexual relations are not “natural,” but when left uninterrogated are constructed in ways that harm women and queer farmers while limiting potential to develop sustainable practices. Women and queer farmers also resist, “re-orienting” gender and sexual relations in ways that expand possibilities for achieving food justice and ecological sustainability. We offer “relational agriculture” as a tool for making visible and re-orienting gender and sexual relations on farms. Relational agriculture brings sexuality into food justice and demonstrates the centrality of gender and sexuality to agricultural sustainability.     

长株潭地区农业功能的时空变化特征及发展策略研究

以长株潭地区23个县市区为研究区域,分别从农产品供给功能、就业和社会保障功能、生态保育功能、文化传承和休闲功能构建评价指标体系,综合运用熵值法、多指标综合评价法和农业功能变化的时空差异诊断模型等方法对长株潭地区1998~2014年农业功能的时空动态变化特征进行研究,根据各地区功能特征提出农业功能发展调控策略。研究结果表明：① 长株潭地区农产品供给功能有大幅提升,其重心有向外进一步扩散趋势;长株潭地区核心区域劳动力就业与社会保障功能下降幅度较大;大围山、罗霄山脉等山地丘陵区生态保育功能优势进一步凸显;文化传承和休闲功能部分区域获得进一步发展,但空间变化差异较小。② 研究发现不同区域农业主导功能不同,根据各地区农业功能不同优势特征,结合自身特色因地制宜发展优势农业并提出相应的优化调控对策,从而为长株潭地区农业多功能发展与功能特征的识别及确定提供理论依据。     

‘Locationally disadvantaged’: planning governmentalities and peri-urban agricultural futures

ABSTRACT

Peri-urban areas are the interface between urban and rural regions, with these regions traditionally acting as foodbowls for adjacent urban areas. This peri-urban agriculture provides a diverse suite of benefits to urban areas. Increasingly, however, peri-urban areas are being converted to residential uses, driven in part by higher land values secured for land converted for residential development. In Sydney, planning and development has tended to treat peri-urban areas as ‘suburbs in waiting’. Using a Foucauldian governmentality approach, this paper investigates the prevailing rationalities in metropolitan-level strategic planning documents—in particular A Plan for Growing Sydney and the Draft South West District Plan—and how these rationalities relate to peri-urban agriculture. Our analysis shows that the three overarching rationalities—the global city, the compact city and the sustainability agenda—frame the urbanisation of peri-urban agricultural lands as necessary and inevitable, and only integrate agriculture as part of the future of the city of Sydney when it can be rationalised within the ‘global city’ narrative. As a result, peri-urban areas are not considered to have unique planning needs, but are imagined as latent spaces that will enable Sydney to meet its housing and job targets through their future development.