Research on the Development Status and Strategy of Productive Rooftop Gardens on Commercial Complexes

The introduction of productive gardens on public building roofs is an active way to use urban idle space. It has ecological, economic, and social values and helps alleviate many urban problems caused by the rapid advancement of land urbanization. This paper takes the productive rooftop garden of an urban commercial complex as an example, and assesses its development status based on methods including ArcGIS, field research, and questionnaire interviews, combined with the overall aspects of the country and key case analysis. The results indicate several key aspects of the current status of such gardens in China. (1) As affected by natural and social factors, the current spatial distribution of productive rooftop gardens of commercial complexes in Chinese mainland is uneven, with 84.21% located in the southeast coast and the Sichuan region. (2) The operation and development of this type of productive landscape is in good shape. The number of rooftop gardens has continued to increase since 2013, and the scale is generally greater. Currently, the business model which combines nature education and parent-child amusement experience activities is the most stable. (3) Cases in good operating condition tend to have relatively related characteristics in layouts, traffic functions, landscape elements, and space design. (4) Questionnaire interviews show that citizens are highly willing to participate in rooftop productive landscapes, while operators still experience challenges in policies, funds, and planting knowledge in practice. This paper analyses the existing problems in the development status and strategy of the rooftop productive landscape. It proposes complementary optimization strategies to serve as a reference for the rooftop design of commercial complexes and the utilization of a significant amount of idle space on the roofs.