Urban Agriculture – towards a sustainable order by Rahul Paul

Title Urban Agriculture – towards a sustainable order

Study The Pearl River Delta and the terms by which a new sprawling state engages with existing agricultural land.

Author Rahul Paul MA Landscape Urbanism Architectural Association, London +44 79 42 84 53 99 labyrinth.arch@gmail.com

Abstract Urban agriculture is increasingly becoming an important activity in urban economies across nations. The potentials of this notion to contribute significantly to the well being of farmers and other citizens have been well established and with the rapidly increasing urbanization trends and the responsive demands for food security, cities are now farming for the future. Transcending beyond the notion of realizing urban agriculture as a typology, the article seeks to investigate it as an integral strategy to perform as a multifunctioning resource for sustainable communities through the understanding of the local food system. This food system cycle in which food production, processing, distribution and consumption are integrated to enhance the environmental, economic, social and nutritional health of a particular place - transforms urban agriculture to work as an integrated sustainable model– towards the emerging notion of Agricultural Urbanism. In the context of the Pearl River Delta, which is marked with compounding problems of environmental degradation, social instability and segregated communities, the transcending of Agricultural Urbanism, realizes urban agriculture as the remedial landscape “that is capable of playing a critical and compensatory 1 role in relation to the ongoing, destructive commodification of the man made world.” Thus, transforming urban agriculture to a “primary ordering device” - which not only functions towards food production but also informs the attendant landscape (urban surface) into a more performative territory. It invokes the functioning matrix connective tissue that organizes not only objects and spaces but also the dynamic processes and events that move through 2 them. Urban Agriculture, as the prototype landscape catalyst which acts not by resolving conflicts, but by setting up the conditions from which negotiations might begin.

Keywords Urban Agriculture/Local Food System/Agricultural Urbanism/Landscape/China.

Frampton,Kenneth,Towards a Critical Regionalism :Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance, in Jencks, Charles and Kropf, Karl ed., Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture, pg 307309, 1997, Academy Editions 2 Wall, Alex, Programming the Urban Surface, in Corner, James ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, pg 233, 1999, Princeton Architectural Press

Introduction: Farming for the future The number of people around the world who live in and around cities is increasing steadily. The “State of the World Cities” by UN- Habitat (2004) predicts that by 2030, 60 percent of the 3 world’s population will live in cities. The growth of cities is due to the natural growth of the urban population and to migration from the rural areas to the cities, with the former gradually becoming more important than the latter. There is general consensus that urban populations will continue to grow rapidly in most developing countries in the decades to come. The increase in urban poverty is accompanying the urbanisation process and poverty is concentrating gradually in the urban areas .A massive 40 percent of the population of Mexico City, for instance and a third of Sao Paulo’s population is at or below the poverty line. According to UNHABITAT, slum populations in urban areas of developing countries were estimated at 870 million in 2001 and are expected to increase by an average of 29 million per 4 year up to 2020. Growing urban poverty goes hand in hand with growing food insecurity and malnutrition in the urban areas. Across the globe, especially in the bigger cities, the urban poor find it increasingly difficult to access food. Food composes a substantial part of urban household expenditures (60-80 percent for poor households) and the lack of cash income translates more directly into food shortages and malnutrition in the city context. This indicates that cities are quickly becoming the principal territories for intervention and planning of strategies that aim to eradicate hunger and poverty and improve livelihoods, requiring innovative ways to stimulate local economic development in combination with enhancing food security and nutrition. Urban agriculture is one such strategy. Urban agriculture can be defined as the “growing of plants and the raising of animals for food and other uses within and around cities and towns, and related activities such as the production and delivery of inputs, and the processing 5 and marketing of products.” Urban agriculture - uses urban resources (land, labour, urban organic wastes, water), produces for urban citizens, it is strongly influenced by urban conditions (policies, competition for land, urban markets and prices) and impacts the urban system (effects on urban food security and poverty, ecological and health Image 1 – Urban Agriculture impacts). The contribution of urban agriculture to food security and healthy nutrition is probably its most important asset. The costs of supplying and distributing food from rural areas to urban areas, or importing food for the cities, is rising continuously, and its distribution within the cities is uneven. As a consequence, urban food insecurity will continue to increase. In addition to enhanced food security and nutrition of the urban producers themselves, urban agriculture produces large amounts of food for other categories of the population. It was estimated that 200 million urban residents produce food for the urban market providing 15 to 20 percent of 6 the worlds. By supplying perishable products such as vegetables, fresh milk and poultry products, urban agriculture to a large extent complements rural agriculture and increases the efficiency of national food systems. This relation of urban agriculture with the notion of the food system possibly holds the key to redefine urban agriculture as a synthetic and multi-scalar discipline leading a range of other disciplines and interests. As stated by Veenhuizen, “Urban agriculture has always been part

Veenhuizen, Rene Van, Cities Farming for the Future – Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, pg 2, 2006, IDRC and RUAF Foundation. 4 Veenhuizen, Rene Van, Cities Farming for the Future – Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, pg 8, 2006, IDRC and RUAF Foundation. 5 Veenhuizen, Rene Van, Cities Farming for the Future – Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, pg 2, 2006, IDRC and RUAF Foundation. 6 Veenhuizen, Rene Van, Cities Farming for the Future – Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, pg 3, 2006, IDRC and RUAF Foundation.

of city life. It has never ceased to exist, but it has adapted to changing situations.” The thought here is not to adapt urban agriculture through policy reformations but to ‘adaptively use’ urban agriculture as a field of operation that determines the ‘way of life’ – Urbanism.

Local Food System- the performative cycle Local food by definition would refer to the ‘food that is produced, processed, and consumed within the same 8 area or region.’ It is part of the concept of local purchasing and local economies, a preference to buy locally produced goods and services. Locally produced and consumed food offers unique opportunities that are not realized in the global food model. This locally based food production or “civic agriculture” is characterised by 9 its multifunctionality and community linkages. This food system focuses on developing local resources that increase food access, food production, food-based economic opportunity, and food related social 10 programming.

Image 2 – Local Food System

The attributes of these resources are defined as sustainable, communicated, proximate, participatory, just and equitable, valued and value-based, and healthy and nourishing. The system functions by engaging four stages of operation – production, processing, distribution and recovery. Each of these stages demands its own scale, its own character of response and its own particular agenda. A set of activities supports each stage, and requires physical space in the urban fabric that not only influences this system, but also other existential configurations. Many other programs such as nutrition education, government food subsidies, 11 institutional purchasing policies, and local food marketing campaigns are not included in this article because they do tend to inform the physical arrangement of the community. 1.Production - Creating and promoting community gardens; promoting rooftop gardens; promoting urban agriculture; economic development opportunities linked to sustainable local agriculture; buy local campaigns. The physical demands range from edible landscaping; community garden; plot allotment gardens; allotment garden plot; community greenhouse; aquaponics; hydroponics, microfarm / market garden.

2.Processing - Creating a coordinated food processing and distribution centre; studies on local food processing; supporting community kitchens; commercial kitchen incubator projects. 3.Distribution - The spatial requirements vary from grocery store; outdoor/ covered market place; marketplace vendor stall; clubs/food banks/etc; cafeteria. 4.Recovery - Promoting food composting; using creative approaches to waste reduction, recycling and composting. Physical demands for this stage are mainly solar aquatic waste treatment; in vessel composting surface water treatment; wetland systems; solid waste treatment plant; composting system; agriculture-based industrial networks; organic waste treatment.

Veenhuizen, Rene Van, Cities Farming for the Future – Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, pg 9, 2006, IDRC and RUAF Foundation. 8 Design Centre for Sustainability UBC, Smart Growth on the Ground, pg 1, No 2, 2005, University of British Columbia. 9 Veenhuizen, Rene Van, Cities Farming for the Future – Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, pg 15, 2006, IDRC and RUAF Foundation. 10 Hohenschau, David Lea, Community Food Security and the Landscape of Cities,pg 1-4, August 2005,Landscape Architecture Program,University of British Columbia. 11 Hohenschau, David Lea, Community Food Security and the Landscape of Cities,pg 1-4, August 2005,Landscape Architecture Program,University of British Columbia.

This food system operates within and is influenced by the urban social, economic and natural environment. The food system can be visualised at household, community and city level and strategizes to relate production, processing and marketing of food produced in urban agriculture with food stemming from other channels (rural areas, imports) and their linkages and relative contributions to the health and nutrition of the population and their contributions to the local economy and environment. In this way possibilities for the development of (certain types of) urban agriculture can be focused to the strengthening of the local food systems, 12 complementing other components of the local food system.

Image 3 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Production

Image 4 - Processing

Image 5 - Distribution

Image 6 - Recovery

Impact surfaces of the system The local food system impacts the urban fabric in multiple surfaces through a multiscalar operation. It performs as a multifunctional loop that transcends from the generic response to food security to a more sustainable outlook by equating various parameters of engagement. Sustainable not only in the environmental guise, but also in its social and economic aspect. The local food system responds in many ways to the urban dynamics which can greatly vary from one urban condition to the other. The following are a more generic categorization for a more equitable and sustainable city: Polyculture and Sustainable Farming - A major impact of local food systems is to encourage

multiple cropping, i.e. growing multiple species and a wide variety of crops at the same time and same place, as opposed to the prevalent commercial practice of large-scale, single-crop monoculture. In a polycultural agro ecosystem, there is usually a more efficient use of labour as each crop has a different cycle of culture, hence different time of intensive care, minimization of risk (lesser effect of extreme weather as one crop can compensate for another), reduction of insect and disease incidence (diseases are usually crop specific), maximization of results with low levels of technology (intensive monoculture cropping often involves very high-technology material and sometimes the use of genetically modified seeds). 13 Multiculture also seeks to preserve indigenous biodiversity. Economic Stability - Food is an economic opportunity â&#x20AC;&#x201C; it is the only resource-based sector, in many developed countries employing more people than logging and more than mining and 14 fishing combined, even when labour shortages are the biggest impediment to growth. The money, spent on locally produced food, stays in the community, generating nearly twice as much local income as money spent on imported food. Farmers, who typically earn a fraction for how much they spent at the grocery store, receive a better share of each purchase, and provide nutritious foods at lower costs. One example of an effort in this direction is community-supported agriculture (CSA), where consumers purchase advance shares in a local farmer's annual production, and pick up their shares, usually weekly, from communal distribution points. In effect, CSA members become active participants in local farming, by providing up-front cash to finance seasonal expenses, sharing in the risks and rewards of the growing conditions, and taking part in the distribution system. Some CSA set-ups require members to contribute a certain amount of labour, in a form of cooperative venture.15

Veenhuizen, Rene Van, Cities Farming for the Future â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, pg 15, 2006, IDRC and RUAF Foundation. 13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_food 14 Hohenschau, David Lea, Community Food Security and the Landscape of Cities, pg 6, August 2005, Landscape Architecture Program, University of British Columbia. 15 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_food

Environmental Management - Local food production can redirect the organic waste that cities

produce, turning wastes into resources. Agriculture-based industrial networks can turn 16 organic wastes into food and energy, or treat wastewater for re-use. Local food also reduces transportation requirements and the associated use of energy and production of greenhouse gases. Social Benefits - Local food production and processing can also contribute to the social life of communities. Activities such as community gardening, vocational training, shopping at farmer’s markets or seasonal celebrations such as harvest festivals generates social opportunities that are accessible to a broad demographic. Community gardening creates activity in areas that benefit from the informal surveillance, and from the increased sense of 17 local ownership.

The integrated approach of urban agriculture within the local food system surfaces possibilities of new terms of adaptation of urban agriculture within the city fabric, not through policy reformations but through realization of its potentialities. This new term of engagement is presently termed as Agricultural Urbanism – it implies a valued, evident and symbiotic relationship between urbanism and the food system whereby the food system supports sustainable urbanity and urbanity supports sustainable agriculture in an inextricably linked and seamless positive feedback loop. Though it can be termed as utopic and contradictory, it may be defined as the future.

Agricultural Urbanism – the emerging model The term “agricultural urbanism” emerged in early 2008 in the HB Lanarc team as a way of recognizing and capturing the realization that a sustainable food system had so many more 18 elements than merely “urban agriculture” and that in the face of the significant momentum and clear design typologies associated with urbanism, that a strong stream of sustainable food system design would need to be created to enhance the presence of sustainable agriculture and food in a more conventional urbanism project. Agricultural Urbanism is proposed to be a system of operation that parallels and is in continuum with many others related to sustainable food systems and agriculture (including urban agriculture). Philosophically, urban agriculture can be described as “gardeners / food specialists looking at 19 a city.” Agricultural urbanism strives to understand the whole scope of sustainable food systems and find ways to integrate and celebrate and enhance all aspects of a sustainable food system in the urban domain.Agricultural Urbanism seeks to create a sustainable urban environment that values, encourages, activates and sustains agriculture enterprise through integration of people, the places where they live and work, and their food. It invites agriculture back into our settlement areas, taking into consideration the plethora of agri-food system activities and contributions that might be desirable and viable for the breadth of spaces and 20 environments, from natural areas to urban cores. While to date “urban agriculture” represents a pragmatic approach to addressing food security issues as well as being somewhat of a social-political movement, it has primarily focused on utilizing small city spaces for food gardening. The planning professions have responded generally and at most, by including community gardens in policy and design. The 16

Hohenschau, David Lea, Community Food Security and the Landscape of Cities, pg 6, August 2005, Landscape Architecture Program, University of British Columbia. 17 Hohenschau, David Lea, Community Food Security and the Landscape of Cities, pg 6, August 2005, Landscape Architecture Program, University of British Columbia. 18 http://www.agriculturalurbanism.org/ 19 Mullinix Kent; Henderson Deborah; Holland Mark; Salle Janin de la; Porter Edward, Fleming Patricia, Agricultural Urbanism and Municipal Supported Agriculture: A New Food System Path for Sustainable Cities, pg 7, 2008, Surrey Regonal Economic Summit. 20 Mullinix Kent; Henderson Deborah; Holland Mark; Salle Janin de la; Porter Edward, Fleming Patricia, Agricultural Urbanism and Municipal Supported Agriculture: A New Food System Path for Sustainable Cities, pg 10, 2008, Surrey Regonal Economic Summit.

preponderance of the agriculture sector has largely dismissed its potential. Agricultural Urbanism, on the other hand, considers the full spectrum of ecosystems and spaces linked to food and agriculture, namely, urban, suburban, rural, and natural areas, their inter connectedness, and the opportunities to support a sustainable, ecologically sound agri-food system and their relationships to one another represent.

Image 7 – Conceptual AU view

Image 8 – Conceptual AU sketch

Agricultural Urbanism planning and design is not only about the growing of food goods, but is inclusive of the full range of local food systems elements including processing, transport, 21 distribution, consumption and waste handling/ utilization. Agricultural Urbanism thus offers a planning strategy, and design framework that combines sustainable community ideas, urban design principles and the practice of urban agriculture and sustainable agri-food system development. It proposes a systematic approach to planning and designing for development integrated with agriculture. Though this notion seeks towards utopia, its still is an innovative approach that foresees the potentials of integrating urban agriculture beyond its generative productive quality. But, what this new proposal of Agriculture Urbanism also connotates is an eidetic image of a city – a ‘model’ of urbanism, much in the domain of the ‘New Urbanism’ philosophy. The pictorial impulse of this model denies deeper modes existence, interrelationship, and creativity; it conceals the agenda of those who commission and construct it, and it seriously limits the 22 design and planning arts in more critically shaping alternative cultural relationships. It tends to propose a city as an object to be realized working efficiently only towards a sustainable agri-food system, without informing or affecting the other existential relationships. This implication probably tends to suggest a unidimensional approach of the local food system whose different activities are independently distributed within the urban domain and are correlated only to inform that particular system. .It limits the possibility of the food system within a certain constricted response and fails to realize its potentials to reclaim maximum possibility. This implies a more static form of urbanism, which in similar terms as the Modernist period tend to visualise the city as a ‘machine to a live in’, in this case a food producing machine. Though this model, by far transcends the Garden City concept of Ebenezer Howard, where agriculture was conceptualized as a mere buffer -scape, still a nostalgic and conservative attitude that continues to emerge through this new notion which misses a great opportunity to reshape the land as a democratic reflection of modern society 23 and emerging conditions Thus this emerging notion of Agricultural Urbanism which is certainly a positive concept, needs to be transcended into a more performative tool – as a strategy which does not just integrates agriculture within the urban domain, but also allow agriculture to articulate the expanded field of the urban domain.

Mullinix Kent; Henderson Deborah; Holland Mark; Salle Janin de la; Porter Edward, Fleming Patricia, Agricultural Urbanism and Municipal Supported Agriculture: A New Food System Path for Sustainable Cities, pg 6, 2008, Surrey Regional Economic Summit. 22 Corner, James, Eidetic Operations and New Landscape, in Corner, James ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, pg 158, 1999, Princeton Architectural Press. 23 Hoyer, Steen, Things take time and time takes things: The Danish Landscape, in Corner, James ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, pg 70, 1999, Princeton Architectural Press.

Transcending the notion – from model to a process The possible transcending of the notion of Agricultural Urbanism lies in reviewing it through the domain of Landscape Urbanism which as Gareth Doherty says works within two over arching themes - “Firstly, that landscape urbanism is seen as a synthetic and multi-scalar discipline leading a range of other disciplines and interests. Secondly, the recognition of 24 landscape infrastructure as the primary ordering device of the city”. What is suggestive through these principles is an intended shift from the pictorial model of Agricultural Urbanism to a more operational model that is processual and multidimensional in nature. This shift would mean to realize urban agriculture infrastructure as the ordering device for the city with the realization that different scales of operation of urban agriculture such as – allotment gardens, community gardens, and commercial farms and so forth generate specific relational tendencies with specific urban configurations. These relations generate different patterns of living and social responses around them, thus creating different atmospheres of urban life and events across them. The other shift would imply the recognition of the local food system more as flexible concept of adaptation rather than a mere technical system of execution. This system if perceived as a cycle of operation, surfaces a metabolic process that potentializes to create new typologies of engagement within the urban fabric and also performs as vectors to accommodate and generate future possibilities of growth. Thus, it strategizes the city to perform as a long term, and in a large scale approach which not only is specifically able to deal with complex natural and artificial systems but also can deal with programmatic changes in the future. This strategy of urbanism gives way to possible realization of a new unifying concept of ecology, which offers as a way of organising the apparently random mix of ‘geography, climate, economics, demography mechanics and 25 culture.’ This relation of a city as an ecological phenomenon surfaces a new form of late post modern urbanism: layered, non – hierarchical, flexible, time based and most importantly 26 strategic. It triggers complex organizational potentials incorporating a sense of time and change over time and project the participation and consensus of multiple of agents. This reconceptualization of Agricultural Urbanism results in fundamental aesthetic and social shifts that both redefine and transform the traditions of the ‘urban agriculture’ - towards a medium that not only is unidimensional to produce food, a system to respond to environmental needs but also an operational landscape in the urban fabric suited to open-endedness, indeterminancy change demanded by contemporary urban conditions.

Urban Agriculture - the remedial landscape China is the most rapidly urbanizing nation in the world, and perhaps in history. Never have so many urban settlements grown so fast, nor has more urban fabric 27 been razed and reconstructed with such haste. Cities in China are spreading out rapidly upon the landscape, undergoing a process of rapid centrifugal expansion. The factors driving the sprawl in China and this lateral expansion are many and complex related to both to reform-era land economics and Maoist policies meant to cultivate urban industry and limit the population and 28 Image 9 - Sprawl in China physical sizes of cities.

Doherty,Gareth, presentation Landscape as Urbanism Allen, Stan, Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation, pg 174, 2009, Routledge. 26 Waldheim, Charles, Landscape as Urbanism, in Waldheim, Charles ed.,The Landscape Urbanism Reader, pg 40,2006, New York: Princeton Architectural Press 27 Campanella, Thomas, China Reinvents the City, in, The Concrete Dragon – China’s Urban Revolution and What it means to the world, pg 282, 2008, Princeton Architectural Press. 28 Campanella, Thomas, Suburbanization and the mechanical Sprawl, in, The Concrete Dragon – China’s Urban Revolution and What it means to the world, pg 191, 2008, Princeton Architectural Press 25

Statistics from the Ministry of Construction of China (abbreviated as MCC, hereafter) show that, the urbanization level in China increased from 17.9% in 1978 to 40.5% in 2003, demonstrating a growth twice as fast as the world average of the same period. Recognizing urbanization's central role in further economic growth and social development, China will continue to give high priority to urbanization in the coming decades. China's urbanization level is projected to range between 48% and 50% by 2020 and the proportion of urban population 29 is expected to exceed 60% by 2030. Urbanization has lead to a conversion of a natural landscape to an urban area and intensifies the competition between different land-use practices in space and time. Currently changing land use in peri-urban areas in China is subject to different influences. On the one hand land use planning is part of a higher regional planning but on the other hand big national and international investors achieve construction permits very quickly. Peri-urban zones in China have gained economic importance and attract domestic as well as foreign investment. “Simply speaking, peri-urban areas are where the forces of globalization and localization 30 intersect”. As a consequence agricultural communities are often forced to adjust to an urban or industrial way of life in a very short time. From an economic point of view peri-urban zones in China often end in a stagnating development due to a lack of comprehensive long term strategies. “Because so much land is involved, the strength of drivers of peri-urbanization may decline in some areas and…it appears that a new uneasy equilibrium that is neither totally 31 urban nor suburban will result in many cases ”. Such tendencies may leave rural structures in some parts of the country economically, socially and ecologically imbalanced. ‘Therefore new strategies should include urban as well as rural development with agricultural concepts in 32 combination with industrialisation plans to complement one another.’ In this demand, for new strategies, the reconceptualised notion of Agricultural Urbanism and furthermore the transcending of urban agriculture possibly surfaces as the most potent tool to answer the demands posed by urbanization in China. In this context urban agriculture most suitably answers the call of Kenneth Frampton’s remedial landscape “that is capable of playing a critical and compensatory role in relation to the ongoing, destructive commodification of the 33 man made world.” Though there might be other strategies that answer this urgent need in possibly different ways, but urban agriculture potentializes as a multifaceted medium that responds in mulitscalar dimension to ‘reconstruct the whole, resurrect the real, reinvent the 34 collective, reclaim maximum possibility.’

Image 10 – Population Density

Image 11 – Agricultural Land

Image 12 – Space Occupation

Jie, Chen, Rapid urbanization in China: A real challenge to soil protection and food security, pg 7, Nanjing 210008, China, Available online 19 June 2006. 30 Zika,Veronika Praendl, Urban Sprawl in China – Land Use Change at the Transition from Village to Town, pg 1, The Vienna Institute for Urban Sustainability. 31 Zika, Veronika Praendl, Urban Sprawl in China – Land Use Change at the Transition from Village to Town, pg 3 The Vienna Institute for Urban Sustainability. 32 Zika,Veronika Praendl, Urban Sprawl in China – Land Use Change at the Transition from Village to Town, pg 1, The Vienna Institute for Urban Sustainability. 33 Frampton,Kenneth,Towards a Critical Regionalism :Six Points for an Architecture of Resistance, in Jencks, Charles and Kropf, Karl ed., Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture, pg 307309, 1997, Academy Editions 34 Koolhaas, Rem, Bigness: or the Problem of Large in Jencks, Charles and Kropf, Karl ed., Theories and Manifestos of Contemporary Architecture, pg 307-309, 1997, Academy Editions.

Firstly, the inclusion of urban agriculture as a strategy responds the growing national demand for food security. Between 1980 to 2004, nearly 44,000 square miles of agricultural land has 35 been lost to development. .In effect, to feed its 1.3 billion population with a per capita cultivated land far below the world average, China is already facing a great challenge of land scarcity. Accelerated urbanization along with explosive economic growth has further 36 worsened the shortage of agricultural land over the last two decades, prompting the People Republic of China, for the first time in its history to become a net importer of food. Urban agriculture by virtue of its generic productive function only, becomes an absolute necessity to sustain China’s population. Secondly, it performs as an environmental infrastructure – an aspect which remains unattended due to the rapid growth procedure in the suburban landscape of the country resulting into accumulation of solid wastes, heavy wastewater pollution and lack of water supply. Not only is China one of the world’s twenty most water deficient countries, but irresponsible corporations and slack government has made water pollution highly prevalent in China. Today, as much as 70% of all rivers, lakes, and reservoirs in China are affected by 37 water pollution, and with each passing day the situation only gets worse. With the Chinese Government proposing several wastewater management strategies, urban agriculture inclusive of the local food system loop, renders an opportunity that not only deals with wastewater issues but also provides equal impunity to recycle solid waste and reuse grey water for effective production. Thirdly, with the reconceptualization of Agricultural Urbanism, the villages that are converted due to the industrialization process as working ghettos by the addition of parcels can now be strategized to perform in a more processual, open ended and hierarchal notion. It allows for a more a reflexive growth of the villages and gives way towards an urbanism that operates through an ecological notion.

Image 13 – AgriculturalDisplacement

Image 14 – Waste Pollution

Image 15 – Working Ghettos

Furthermore, the urban agriculture (inclusive of the local food system) contributes to strengthen the economic position for farmers. Additionally the rural economy needs more investments and job creation in appropriate rural small and medium scale industries and service companies. Hence, the agricultural sector will be unburdened and further - still illegal migration into cities shall be avoided. Under these circumstances land consolidation measures – which is e.g. redistributing of given up farm land, redrawing property lines of agricultural fields to reduce farm fragmentation and to enlarge farming structures – will be reasonable and lead to the facilitation of farming conditions. A very rough calculation which estimates that an average farm size of one ha would lead to an economically stable situation for Chinese farmers shows that at least 50 % of farmers would 213 have to leave agriculture 38 and find new jobs in other sectors. To prevent these people migrating to cities and causing there further uncontrolled growth and land loss major endeavours have to be undertaken to 35

Campanella, Thomas, Suburbanization and the mechanical Sprawl, in, The Concrete Dragon – China’s Urban Revolution and What it means to the world, pg 15, 2008, Princeton Architectural Press 36 Jie, Chen, Rapid urbanization in China: A real challenge to soil protection and food security, pg 1, Nanjing 210008, China, Available online 19 June 2006. 37 http://www.greenpeace.org/china/en/campaigns/toxics/water-pollution. 38 Zika,Veronika Praendl, Urban Sprawl in China – Land Use Change at the Transition from Village to Town, pg 5,The Vienna Institute for Urban Sustainability.

enable them to stay in their villages and to find another job. More so, these villages could stay the places of residence (which is not yet considered in the Chinese small town strategy) with a high quality of life whereas small towns in the near region could offer new employment, shopping possibilities, schools, social services etc. The regional cooperation of villages, small and medium towns would lead to a strengthened regional economy based on the exchange of rural and urban goods and services. On the one hand fresh regional farmers` products for the near urban markets and a recreation potential for the urban population in the villages and in a well maintained environment, on the other hand different kinds of urban offers to fulfil the daily, weekly and monthly needs of the rural population would reverse migration into cities in the long run. Furthermore the valorisation of rural regions also includes the explicit appreciation, sustainment and protection of nature and typical cultural landscape as public good. It is an important service by farmers for the whole population and the basis for rural tourism. These strategies, no matter how promising they sound, do have their own limitations with respect to the administrative policies of China and to be realized needs an in-depth negotiation to be made with multilevel stakeholders, administrative zonal regulations and higher authorities. China’s hunger for quick money, large scale development plans and grand ambitions also pose restrictions to such local scale outlook. Furthermore, the speed of urban growth and development in China, does not allow for the time to review and consider such lateral strategies of urbanisation. But with recent conditions of recession and the downfall of economy, these strategies might be potent to localize the economy and stabilise the urban conditions. With the Chinese government announcing that they are planning to inject the 39 equivalent of $586 billion into their economy to help stimulate growth, this local strategy might be feasible to generate and regulate the material exchanges within the local territory towards Domestic Urbanization - a more resilient, adaptive and self awareness system which reorganizes based on local capabilities to accommodate the present condition but is also open ended to future participation. But whatever be the outcome of China’s growth, what cannot be overlooked are the possibilities that urban agriculture offers towards economy, the social structuring, and the environmental engagements and towards urbanism – a productive landscape which performs as a mean to resist the homogenization of the environment while 40 also heightening local attributes and collective sense of place.

Conclusion: Prototype Landscape Attention to urban agriculture has increased markedly during the last couple of decades. The number of activities to promote urban agriculture at international, national and local level has grown, but urban farmers in many cities in the world still struggle to get their main survival 41 strategy recognised by city authorities. The demand of policy makers and local practitioners for inspiring examples of successful policies and actions in cities is therefore growing. Urban agriculture contributes to a wide variety of urban issues and is increasingly being accepted and used as a tool in sustainable city development. Currently the challenge is its integration into city planning and facilitation of its multiple benefits for urban inhabitants. A growing number of cities are designing policies and programmes on urban agriculture, applying multistakeholder planning approaches to identify effective ways to integrate urban agriculture into 42 urban sector policies and urban land use planning and to facilitate the development of safe and sustainable urban agriculture.

Dyer, Geoff ,China hit by massive drop in exports, Financial Times, Published: March 11 2009 03:30 | Last updated: March 11 2009 14:27 40 Corner, James, Recovering Landscape as a Critical Cultural Practice, in Corner, James ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, pg 13, 1999, Princeton Architectural Press. 41 Veenhuizen, Rene Van, Cities Farming for the Future – Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, pg 2, 2006, IDRC and RUAF Foundation. 42 Veenhuizen, Rene Van, Cities Farming for the Future – Urban Agriculture for Green and Productive Cities, pg 2, 2006, IDRC and RUAF Foundation.

The association of the local food system with urban agriculture possibly gives way to seek a new dimension to urban agriculture within the city fabric and renders it with a more multifunctional outlook. Though this system serves an efficient tool a more careful analysis of the contextual conditions is of utmost importance to avoid the risk of employing the system as a regimented principle and homogenize societies functioning within different parameters. Only when such careful study is carried out, urban agriculture will be sustainable, maintaining its dynamism and flexibility, adapting to changing urban conditions and demands, intensifying its productivity and diversifying its functions for the city, whilst reducing associated health and environmental risks and by doing so gaining more social and political acceptability. In certain parts of a city, the existing forms of urban agriculture may fade away or change its form and functions drastically, while new forms of urban agriculture may develop in other parts of that same city. Thus, potentializing urban agriculture to transform into a dynamic urban field assuming different functions, geometries, distributive arrangements and appearances as 43 changing circumstances demand. Urban Agriculture as this dynamic field potentially operates as the green infrastructure which functions strategically to create conditions for future events. Its operation combines different kinds of spaces and activities within its domain and is able to sustain program beyond its own logistical requirements. As opposed to a conventional understanding of infrastructure as an artefact that exists for the sake of a technical program, urban agriculture as the green infrastructure operates in relation to different disciplines from the environment to the social, across different scales, from the household to the urban, performs as a mulitiscalar model from rooftops to community gardens and engages with multiple agents from economic agendas to health concerns. It is through this combinational role that that the operation of this green infrastructure has the potential to mediate between the urban and the natural in order to contribute to the reconceptualization of the urban realm towards maintaining a sustainable 44 order. With the ongoing restructuring of the world due to globalization forces and the growth of the contemporary city demanding a multidisciplinary response, urban agriculture as the dynamic field could possibly emerge as the new prototype landscape that networks the urban fabric the ‘first or primary type of something that triggers further reactions, processes and events. 45 They do not sit in isolation, but are networked into space and society.’ Planning by such a prototype can be anarchic, an alternative to master planning, or can embrace master planning and change it from within. It could work with the complex urban web characteristic of what Castells describes as the network society (1999) and Deleuze and Guattari refer to as the 46 rhizome (1987). This landscape prototype can accept political, sociological, economic and other differences and uncertainties and work with them and negotiate their development over 47 time. It can exist as a tool for negotiation or comhrá. This prototype landscape can be temporary or permanent, it can be big or they can be small or multiscalar in distribution. Urban agriculture as the prototype can facilitate a change and dialogue and action over time across multiple disciplines and potentialize to be situated, moved, hybridised, proliferated and deleted as negotiations progress. The ripples caused by this prototype could facilitate an 48 ongoing catalysis as new possibilities and opportunities unfold over time and space. Through precise interventions, following from rigorous analysis that embraces the latent and accidental as well as the obvious, urban agriculture as the prototype landscape, in the future has a real potential in the resolution of conflicts between the local and the global, not by resolving them, but by setting up the conditions from which negotiations and developments (or non-developments), may begin.

Wall, Alex, Programming the Urban Surface, in Corner, James ed., Recovering Landscape: Essays in Contemporary Landscape Architecture, pg 233, 1999, Princeton Architectural Press 44 Gray, Christopher, From emergence to divergence – modes of Landscape Urbanism, pg 71, 2006, School of Architecture, Edinburgh College of Art. 45 Doherty,Gareth, presentation Landscape as Urbanism 46 Doherty, Gareth, Landscape Catalysts, pg 2, Unpublished. 47 Doherty, Gareth, Landscape Catalysts, pg 3, Unpublished. 48 Doherty, Gareth, presentation Landscape as Urbanism.

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Websites: http://darwin.bio.uci.edu/~sustain/suscoasts/krismin.html - Wastewater Pollution in China, Kris Min. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_food - Local Food - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://www.agriculturalurbanism.org/ - Agricultural Urbanism – Planning and Design for Sustainable Food Sytems. http://www.greenpeace.org/china/en/campaigns/toxics/water-pollution. - Water Pollution Has Become China’s Most Urgent Environmental Problem Today. http://www.rali.boku.ac.at/7643.html - Landscape as Urbanism, Gareth Doherty, Harvard University, Cambridge USA http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/94035f16-0dec-11de-8ea3-0000779fd2ac.html - China hit by massive drop in exports, Geoff Dyer, Financial Times, Published: March 11 2009 03:30, last updated: March 11 2009 14:27,

Image Courtesy: (all other images unless otherwise mentioned are credits of the author). Image 2 – http://www.agriculturalurbanism.com/files/images/Food%20System_1.jpg Image 3, 4, 5 & 6 - David Lea Hohenschau, Community Food Security and the Landscape of Cities, Dissertation, 2005, Landscape Architecture Program, University of British Columbia, Unpublished. Image7 - http://www.southlandsintransition.ca/sites/southlandsintransition.ca/files/images/ Image 8 - http://www.agriculturalurbanism.org/ Image 9 - http://www.flowerseast.com/Originals/BURTYNSKY/38288.jpg. Image 10, 11 & 12 - Veronika Praendl-Zika, Urban Sprawl in China – Land Use Change at the Transition from Village to Town, The Vienna Institute for Urban Sustainability, Unpublished. Image 13 - Model of Urban Growth in PRD, Katya Larina, AALU, 2007-08.