Foodforcities:Therevivalofurbanagriculture verticalfarms AnthonyBoanadaFuchs Cities are the essential focal points of society, being engine of growth, concentration of wealth,

nodes of exchange and cultural hotspot. This holds true for Europe with an urbanization rate of up to 80 percent and India with less than a third living in cities. The permanent growth direction towards more urbanized societies gave impetus to large discussion about sustainability and the limit of growth as formulated by the Club of Rome. How can the planet with a projected urbanization rate of 80 percent feed the additional 3 billions of city dwellers be fed if already currently 80 percent of all arable land is in use? Most answers remain based on a strong trust in technological progress. A more tangible approach, and interesting in the perspective of urban excellence, takes another stance by reversing the role of cities and investigating ways urban centers could become producers instead of mere consumers of agricultural goods. Although practiced since the dawn of human settlement, the cultivation of food and herding of animals within city limits have proportionally declined with the size of cities as a result of competing land uses, despite the multi-fold advantages of incorporating primary production into urban environments: it decreases external dependencies, ecological footprints, and indirectly contributes with the additional green spaces to the improvement in air and temperature quality.
The discourse on urban agriculture is broad and has recently received larger media coverage. Initiated with an aim for poverty reduction in developing countries the discussions have gradually entered European cities. Particular present is urban agriculture in the context of shrinking or zero (population) growth cities. As not all spaces in the city are locked in tight real estate dynamics, there is potential for alternative uses, including green spaces, urban forestry and agriculture. Interesting examples are the green heart of the Ruhr area that smartly integrated obsolete mining structures into a large leisure complex, or a multi-storey mushroom farm in an abandoned Plattenbau in Berlin that delivers local food to a neighborhood. Latter could be affiliated to vertical farming, a concept that has been developed over the last two decades and resulted more recently in the development of prototypes all over the world. The forerunner countries are the already well known green pioneers such as the Scandinavian countries, Holland, Denmark, Germany. More surprising developers of vertical farms are South Korea, Singapore and even the United States, where the Rooftop Victory Garden in Chicago and the Five Boro Roof Top Complex in New York City are good examples of the technological possibilities in this field. The success in higher media coverage, research output, and project realizations of urban agriculture could be interpreted as a successful marriage of two distinct discourses. By moving closer to the concerns of urban green spaces and emphasizing the common benefits of the tightly not-so-different interventions, urban agriculture has gained some convincing arguments for large scale applications. If carefully reading the attached references a successful integration into the planning mechanisms of megacities becomes more and more a mere question of political will, less of financial or technical feasibilities. For more information http://www.verticalfarm.com/ http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/dining/28roof.html http://www.urbanhabitatchicago.org/projects/true-nature-foods/ http://www.gardeningknowhow.com/urban/rooftop-gardening-for-city-dwellers.htm http://www.greenroofs.com/content/Various%20Types-of-Green-Roof-Systems-Come-Together-at-NYC's-5Boro-Complex.htm http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12710-green-roofs-could-cool-warming-cities.html