Seeds of Change : Using Urban Agriculture to Move a City Towards Sustainability

As the global sustainability challenge intensifies, food has emerged as a critical issue in sustainable development. Growing food within city limits, or urban agriculture (UA), is one way to help increase access to fresh, local, healthy food for everyone while simultaneously reducing environmental i...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Peng, Chen, Peters, Adele, Wetherell, Treva, Yep, Valerie
Format: Others
Language:English
Published: Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, Avdelningen för maskinteknik 2009
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Online Access:http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:bth-2191
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Summary:As the global sustainability challenge intensifies, food has emerged as a critical issue in sustainable development. Growing food within city limits, or urban agriculture (UA), is one way to help increase access to fresh, local, healthy food for everyone while simultaneously reducing environmental impacts. While UA is increasing on a global scale, it is not always being supported in a strategic manner. This thesis explores the opportunity of how UA can be supported to help move cities towards sustainability. Current UA practices were evaluated based on information from literature and interviews using the five-level framework method. As a way to help provide guidance in strategic planning, the framework for strategic sustainable development (FSSD) was utilized, introducing the concepts of a full-system perspective, a principle-based definition of sustainability, and backcasting. Combining current UA success principles, stakeholder input, and the FSSD, an enhanced planning guide was created as a tool to help cities better plan for UA.