PhD research
AIMS OF INVESTIGATION
- To model East Croydon as an example of urban agriculture. The workwill consider what are the equitable environmental, social and geographic boundaries of East Croydon, as an example of an urban agricultural system.
- An assessment of how East Croydon currently supplies food to it town centre, looking at distribution, retail, transport and waste disposal, with relative to food miles and associated CO2 emissions.
- To systematically map the rooftops, grassed amenities, vertical faces and vacant indoor spaces of East Croydon Town centre, to assess the total area available for food production. Creating new ways to read this urban landscape by combining existing formal GIS information, borough statistics and related census data with bespoke GPS mapping, site visits, photography and questionnaires.
- To investigate suitable micro food growing systems, relative to energy use and how the yields would contribution to feeding a local urban population.
- To consider how urban agricultural practices can combine with current food distribution networks and retail outlets, to reduce food miles, processing and packing.
- The investigation will consider how the practice and theory of urban planning, architecture and agriculture can be combined together, to enabling a new understanding of the history and discourse of urban design and urban ecology.
ABSTRACT/ RESEARCH QUESTIONS
How much of East Croydon’s urban centre is suitable for growing food and how does this food relate to the surrounding social and economic superstructure?
By comparison with the existing food distribution system, would an urban Agricultural system necessarily reduce the embodied energy of food consumed in East Croydon.
What types of food-growing systems are suitable for the urban environment and how do they relate to the local ecology?
What is the scale of social and economic organisation, most appropriate to urban agricultural practices and does the use of formal GIS systems contradict any attempt at creating an holistic paradigm?