Onderzoek

This paper attempts to determine how a sustainable food system can be shaped inside and within boarder of urban area. It studies a sustainable land use pattern that can be defined for periurban areas to make cities self-productive and ideal for plant growth while simultaneously enhancing city dweller’s lifestyle. A periurban and urban farming was defined as a mean of bringing food production into and within the open and built up spaces. The southern part of Piacenza city was chosen as a case study for survey to find a sustainable approach in food production and analysing its social and cultural effects besides investigating its roles in quality of life’s improvement. The urban and periurban farming is seeking to find methods of plant growth and raising livestock in urban environments and a systems for growing food in efficient ways. The research found that it is possible to create an ideal semi commercial plant growth within cities. Periurban neighbourhoods are suitable linkages between rural and urban areas, those areas surrounding cities, which are in most ways integrated with the city can be defined as the transition zone agricultural lands and cities. These areas will create new opportunities for semi commercial and community farming. The connection between urban and rural through periurban area creates a regional urban food network. In this network nodes are combination of natural resources, skilled people, institutions, economy, history, culture and living environments of food systems. These nodes are twofold; preparing the ground for semi commercial farming in periurban area and providing services for dense urban area to adapt farming into urban lifestyle.

In the years to come, future cities or smart cities will witness huge transformation into complex food generation systems, a move that would aim towards a more self-sustainable production of plants and livestock. Even though future cities would be termed more as “Energy Efficient” cities, the need of the hour is certainly to build a more self-sufficient method of producing food in the urban areas. In order to achieve this, it’s required to research and understand the food growing patterns and land adoption practices in the periurban and urban areas. About 10,000 years ago, several groups of people deserted the universal and successful lifestyle embraced by the nomadic and started practicing their own agriculture cultivation for crops and raised animals for a variety of purposes. This transformation of food production method brought about the formation of primitive cities. It was Middle East that first saw the presence of farming, which composed of predominantly wheat and barley and from there on, it spread to Europe, West Asia and other western nations. The paper presents the transforming historical changes that happened in the food productivity by city dwellers, and how the developments in the urban world is set to change the course of food cycle within the cities. Even though the earlier cities were dominated by the first generation of farmers for their own safe heavens, the necessity to counter difficulties in feeding food to the urban states and food insecurity restored the agricultural approaches and productivity back into the cities. Contrasting the theory with the “Sitopia”, which meant restoring the production of food into wide-open spaces inside cities, the study here reveals the basis of the idea and the reasons why cities were forced to rethink the strategy adopted for urban development and bring in more food security to the overall food system.

As the vital resource for life, water has been a central theme on the international agenda for several decades. The impacts of climate change and drought have been highly problematic in developing countries. Agriculture and water scarcity have double-barrel effect on each other. Agriculture is the most important reason of water shortages in cities with agricultural based economy like Rafsanjan. The main agricultural product of Rafsanjan is pistachio. About 70 percent of total population of the city and its suburban areas are occupied in agriculture. Pistachio has an important contribution in economic situation of Rafsanjan’s residents and the country. In the last decades the city has faced with an extreme drought, the risk of major crop losses and water restrictions for its population. Water scarcity and the decline of agriculture in Rafsanjan has influenced the social life and the economy of the city. The fall of agricultural industry and decreasing income of farm owners and relatively the amount of available job has had serious local, national and global consequences. Because of the available job opportunities in agricultural industry of Rafsanjan it has been a popular destinations for refugees from neighboring countries. But the decline of agricultural industry has result in migration of refugees from Rafsanjan to other countries especially in Europe. In a global level, this movement of refugees can affect refugee crises in European counties. The Local Agenda 21 for the city of Rafsanjan in one of global efforts that was made to save the city of Rafsanjan and its agricultural industry. The Local Agenda 21 for Rafsanjan is an UNHABITAT Program. The Local Agenda for Sustainable Development has been seeking a strategy aimed at managing the living space and urban development. The program tried to find the required resources, evaluates and uses them for the development purposes. Despite the national and international efforts to solve these issues, increasing immigration rate has faced city with the risk of becoming a ghost town in the near future. This research has studied the impact of water scarcity and unsustainable agricultural practices in Rafsanjan on immigration of farm owners and workers and the impact of local, national and global development plans on adaptation of agricultural practices in Rafsanjan to climate change. The research has used a quantitative data collection method through a questionnaire consisting of 13 questions, which its content validity was confirmed by experts in the field and its reliability was calculated by the Cronbach’s alpha. The target group of the survey were 200 farmers who have sold their lands and 180 people who were working for them and lost their jobs in past seven years. The result has shown that water scarcity was the most important reason for farmers to sell their lands. It also suggests that those who have abandoned agriculture were using unsustainable irrigation methods, were not familiar with any climate change resistance agricultural practices and no global or national program was supporting their activities. A large number of foreign agricultural workers who lost their jobs were living the in suburban areas, inside farms or refugee camps. Most of them are still unoccupied, living illegally with the risk of deportation and have the intention to migrate to a third country. The research concludes that the impacts of climate change on agriculture and is already alarming. The changes in precipitation and temperature which has led to water shortages in Rafsanjan has damaged the agricultural industry and consequently farmers and agricultural workers life. The study suggests that adapting agriculture to climate change through climate resistance and efficient irrigation system as a short term solutions and mitigation of climate change through adoption of sustainable agricultural practices as a long term solution are essential for future of cities.

Future cities will witness huge transformation into complex food generation systems, a move that would aim towards a more self-sustainable production of plants and livestock. A peri-urban and urban farming methodology was defined as a means of bringing food production within the open and built up spaces of the cities. The first part of research presents the transforming historical changes that happened in the food productivity by city dwellers. The second part analyses peri-urban and urban farming methods by two surveys. One in the Piacenza, a case study that is located in a developed country and the other one is a comparison between Piacenza and Rafsanjan, a case study in a developing country. This research attempts to determine how a sustainable food system can be shaped within the borders of urban areas and how a sustainable land use pattern can be defined for these areas, making cities self-productive and ideal for plant growth, while simultaneously enhancing city dweller’s lifestyle. In the third part of research the possibility of creation an ideal semi commercial plant growth within cities and urban fringes through an experimental design project was tried.

This paper focus on two questions that how a sustainable food system can be shaped inside and within boarder of urban area and how a sustainable land use pattern can be defined for these areas and make cities self-productive and ideal for plant growth while simultaneously enhances city dweller’s lifestyle. Urban farming is becoming popular worldwide but people in developing and developed world have different opinion about this phenomenon. We analysed peri-urban and urban farming by two surveys, Piacenza as a case study that is located in a developed country and the other one Rafsanjan as a case study in a developing country. The paper attempts to determine which factors affect people mind about urban and peri-urban farming and seeks a sustainable approach that ensures residences satisfaction and improvement of quality of their life. The relation between cities’ structure, people culture on interest in urban agriculture based on the negative and positive aspects of urban farming in population targets’ point of view were analysed. The results revealed that economy, culture and cities’ structure and infrastructure have direct relationship with interest to agriculture and farming inside cities that should be considered in urban planning for making sustainable food system inside each city.

Over the past few years researchers, policy makers and planners turned their attention to sustainability transition of agro food systems. Much effort has been made to place food production in the urban agendas. Changing the spatial dimension of food production and its adaptation to urban lifestyle requires novel agricultural technologies and therefore transitions in socio-technical systems. Hi-Tech Urban Agro-Food Production Systems (HTUFPS) through vertical farming and hydroponic cultivation methods is one of the strategies for sustainability transitions of agro food systems that has been under examination in different countries. China with its large population and increasing level of urbanization is among the leading countries in development of HTUAFPS. This paper studies the political, social and technological regimes that have an influential role in the rise of HTUFPS in Chinese mega cities, particularly in Shanghai. The multi-level perspective (MLP) and Actor-network theory (ANT) were employed to study sustainability transition of agro food systems in Shanghai. MLP suggests that the sustainability transition is the result of external pressures at the landscape level and internal pressure coming from niches. The ANT explores the relations of human and non-human entities in the process of stabilizing this sustainability transition’s actor-network. The data were collected by a mixed qualitative and quantitative approach through documentary research, in depth interview and survey. The collected data were used to define and track the influential actors and actants in the translation process of sustainability transition of agro food production systems in Shanghai. The China Academy of Agricultural Science (CAAS) has been considered as the focal actor in this sustainability transition. This paper studies the role of various actants that are involved in transition of conventional agriculture to HTUFP including IEDA, SOCs (i.e. COFCO), ministries, governmental organization in different levels, Sino-foreign collaborations and private sectors. Although in China, State government has control over all transitions inside the country, this study concludes that the high rank of CAAS in Chinese political structure and its connection with both CPC and state government has put it in the position to define itself as the focal actor and consequently the Obligatory Passage Point (OPP).  To achieve alliance with the other actors of transition’s actor-network, the agricultural reform policies announced through China’s N.1 document and Five-year guidelines have been introduced as the intermediaries which tend to form the relationship between the transition’s actants.

• An Investigation of the Critical Success and Failure Factors of Smart Urban Food Systems. A Comparative Study Between Amsterdam and Milano Metropolitan Regions.
• Sustainable Urban Food System, Foodscape In Our Habitats.
• Policy to Practice in Transition from Conventional Agriculture to Hi-Tech Urban Food Production System. A Case Study of Amsterdam.