Elephant and Castle
Abstract
The Edible Urban Landscape: An Assessment Method for Retro-Fitting Urban Agriculture Into An Inner London Test Site
This thesis explores the practice called urban agriculture (UA), which attempts to cut down on urban food and non-food imports, by growing crops and products on land in and around cities. The practice is wide spread and ultimately necessary in many of the expanding cities of the developing nations, to ensure food security.
However, the prescriptive nature of UK planning laws leaves little, if any room, for self-organised UA practices to evolve, hindered further by the fragmented and undocumented nature of urban green space planning.
This thesis has developed a method, based around Geographical Information Systems (GIS), for retro fitting, measuring and evaluating, a vegetable growing, UA system, which could be integrated into green urban space. The results of the method should be in a format which makes them quantifiable for both architects and planners, so that UA food systems can be considered as a form of renewable energy, along side wind or solar.
This method will be tested in three central London locations. The results were evaluated, relative to their yields per square metre, how they would feed the surrounding population and the CO2 emissions saved on reduced food miles and by eliminating the need to maintain some grasser areas.
The results show that the central London test areas, together with its surrounding environs, are rich in traditional, as well as undocumented open space and that the conversion of 26% of this space to UA practices, could provide 27% of the daily vegetable requirements over a 259 growing period. The method established a ratio of yield of vegetables, per square meter per person, which would be suitable for architects and planners to incorporate into urban planning.
The impact on CO2 from food miles and ground maintenance equipment, was quantifiable but not conclusive, therefore a more comprehensive system of measuring emissions needs to be adopted for further work.
Key words: Urban Agriculture, Geographical Information System, food miles, CO2 emissions, Parks, grass, landscape, energy, density, yields.