An Urban Farm Sprouts in the Heart of Shenzhen

Thursday, 21 January 2010

China as part of the Shenzhen & Hong Kong Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture. The installation, called Landgrab City, is a square plot of land that represents a map of the city and visualizes how much food is required to sustain it.

The urban farm was commissioned by the Shenzhen/Hong Kong Biennale and was created by Joseph Grima, Jeffrey Johnson, and José Esparza to help the city’s residents visualize where their food comes from. The plot, which is subdivided into different crops, is surrounded by a map of one of the city’s dense downtown areas. The plot of land is the same scale as the map and represents the area needed to support 4.5 million people, which is the population of the surrounding area. The cultivated area is subdivided to represent the amount of food consumed from each food group – vegetables, cereals, fruit, pasture for livestock, and more.

The creators are trying to educate the residents about the origin of their food and explain that the area’s food production is not clustered together as it is in the installation. In reality, food production is scattered throughout the country and even beyond its borders. The creators make the point that food scarcity and volatile prices on the international market are pressing concerns, and because of this, vast swathes of land are being “grabbed” for agricultural purposes, hence the name Landgrab City. Agricultural land, they explain, could play larger roles in future international policy and diplomacy than previously recognized.

http://www.guangzhouexpert.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=486:an-urban-farm-sprouts-in-the-heart-of-shenzhen&catid=82:shenzhen&Itemid=459

What is urban agriculture?

http://www.ruaf.org/node/512

Urban agriculture can be defined shortly as the growing of plants and the raising of animals within and around cities.

The most striking feature of urban agriculture, which distinguishes it from rural agriculture, is that it is integrated into the urban economic and ecological system: urban agriculture is embedded in -and interacting with- the urban ecosystem. Such linkages include the use of urban residents as labourers, use of typical urban resources (like organic waste as compost and urban wastewater for irrigation), direct links with urban consumers, direct impacts on urban ecology (positive and negative), being part of the urban food system, competing for land with other urban functions, being influenced by urban policies and plans, etc.

Urban Agriculture And Sustainable Cities

http://www.cityfarmer.org/alexandraUA.html

The conditions of city life are such that many urbanites are never aware of the complex relationships between humans and the Earth. Days spent in glass towers, crawling traffic and crowded supermarkets do not facilitate an understanding of the extent to which city dwellers depend on a hidden, external agricultural system…….

…….Today's cities operate on a throughput model, in which resources are imported and wastes are exported. Urban agriculture can help to close the loop between inputs and outputs by converting what are traditionally viewed as waste products into food and fuel, thus lowering the size of the city's ecological footprint. For example, sewage sludge from treatment plants can be added to other organic byproducts such as leaf litter, garden trimmings, and food scraps. When composted, this mixture yields a rich mulch which can be used as fertilizer to nurture the growth of quality organic edibles in urban gardens (Laurence, 1996, p. 5)……..