Search results

This paper defines Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) as a strategy for the coherent integration of urban agriculture into urban space planning. The case is made for considering urban agriculture as an essential element of sustainable infrastructure.

Recent and historic arguments are used to support the qualitative and quantifiable advantages of introducing urban agriculture into contemporary open urban space design.

The body of the paper focuses on design issues related to the placing and perception of CPUL and urban agriculture. It draws on primary research undertaken in Cuba, considering Cuba as a laboratory for design research into urban agriculture.

Design studies by the authors are used to demonstrate the viability and physical manifestation of urban agriculture within a Continuous Productive Urban Landscape. The paper proposes that, while an environmental and design case can be made for the integration of urban agriculture, planners and designers need to explore the public perception of productive landscape if its full potential is to be realized.

The idea that urban agriculture can be read as “ornament” is discussed with reference to the writing of British artist Tom Phillips. Contemporary cultural/artistic practice is referred to as a means for exploring and communicating ideas related to productive urban landscapes.

The paper concludes with new research findings related to the public perception of open urban space based on the Havana CPUL design research project “Finding Parque Lenin”.

This article explores the impacts of the changing land-use on urban heat island (UHI) in an urban transformation zone in Ankara (Türkiye). Identifying a characteristic rural landscape until the 1950s, the study area experienced a drastic land-use change by razing the fertile landscape of the city and replacing it with a sealed surface. Development of the squatter houses after the 1960s and, subsequently, the implementation of a new housing morphology have introduced new sceneries, scales and surface conditions that make the study area a noteworthy case to analyze.

Regarding the drastic spatio-temporal change of the study area, this research assesses the impacts of the changing land-use on UHI based on three periods. Using 1957, 1991 and 2021 aerial imaginaries and maps, it analyzes the temperature alteration caused by the changing land-use. To do so, different surface types, green patterns and built-up areas have been modeled using Ankara climatic data and transferred to ENVI-Met to calculate the Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) values.

The calculation has been developed over a transect covering an area of 40 m × 170 m, which includes diversity in terms of architecture, landscape and open space elements. To encourage future design strategies, the research findings deliberate into three extents that discuss the lacking climate knowledge in the ongoing urban transformation projects: impervious surface ratio and regional albedo variation, changing aspect ratio and temperature variation at the pedestrian level.

Urban transformation projects, being countrywide operations in Türkiye, need to cover climate-informed design strategies. Herein, the article underlines the critical position of design decisions in forming a climate-informed urban environment. Dwelling on a typical model of housing transformation in Türkiye, the research could trigger climate-informed urban development strategies in the country.

Analyses of cultural landscapes need to combine natural and social-cultural components to promote discussions on landscape planning and heritage management. This qualitative research explores the integrated case study of ten municipalities in the “Vineyard Landscape of Piedmont: Langhe-Roero and Monferrato”, Italy, a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape. The research aims to raise awareness of its aesthetic-perceptive features, the importance of effective identification of visual impacts and to promote mitigation strategies/actions for updating the current Management Plan.

Two rounds of interviews and focus groups with mayors were performed in 2015 and 2020 to identify trends and drivers of change affecting the territories. Potential mitigation strategies and actions were voted on and selected in response to five critical themes that emerged from the survey, mainly related to real estate and its supplies.

The results suggest tools and policies in the fields of landscape architecture and landscape design that could benefit planning and management at different levels. They support the design of sustainable scenarios, improving mayors' understanding of the significance of cultural landscapes and promoting them as heritage managers. Furthermore, they intend to preserve the authenticity of the landscape by supporting its attributes for long-term conservation.

The research makes an original contribution on the visual implications of anthropogenic landscape transformations in ten municipalities constituting this serial property, six years after its UNESCO nomination (2014).

The purpose of this paper is to determine the basis for a management agenda for the Tolima Coffee Cultural Landscape (CCLT) in Colombia. To this end, a delimitation model has been developed. However, the approach taken to institute the agenda of the CCLT, as a comprehensive academic and policy-based theme, is based on the formulation of a social agenda that supports its construction.

A theoretical framework is proposed that addresses the sociocultural complexities of the Tolima cultural landscape. This is based on an ethnohistorical approach that elucidates the development of this landscape as a collective construction of pre-Hispanic origin. Therefore, this investigation has been perceived through the theoretical and conceptual framework of the cultural landscape concept and the unique historical and cultural phenomenon that help to define all landscapes. More specifically, the authors have demonstrated the close links that exist between nature and culture, requiring increasingly accurate methods in order to adapt the landscape definition to the specific Latin American context, rather than adhering to the institutional framework proposed by UNESCO.

The assessment methods currently in use support the interpretation of a set of qualitative and quantitative attributes inherent to the Tolima region. However, additional methods still remain similar to those of the Coffee Cultural Landscape of Colombia (CCLC) that has already been inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List. The CCLC is considered to be a representative landscape—or “type” landscape—that “mirrors” the CCLT. Taken as a whole, this theoretical construction combined with the official designation allows local communities to understand the spatial phenomena of the CCLT. This will have the effect of enabling communities at all levels, from local government to landholders and farmers, to authorize its existence and allow for its continuing development and governance. The additional approval for further academic research, combined with the totality of these elements, also has the added effect of empowering communities, their economic future and their cultural interests.

The management agenda that the authors are proposing may form the beginning of regional policy initiatives that reflect a positive strategy for highlighting the value of cultural heritage, thereby ensuring the protection of cultural properties and landscapes and allowing for a more sustainable environment and livelihood for its occupants.

Inadequate housing is a crisis that affects all areas of the world. The severity and magnitude of this crisis has been augmented by the exponential growth in the global population. Expounding upon this problem, particularly in the South, is the migration of rural peoples into urban cores, fostering the creation of mega-cities of illegally developed, inadequate housing. These developments lack basic necessities including access to water, proper sanitation, and safe areas to prepare food.

Urban agriculture has presented itself as a key design component in the mission to alleviate the aforementioned crisis. The incorporation of agriculture as a permanent and edible design feature bolsters the design methodology of sustainable urban fabrics by presenting opportunities of cohesion between built and cultural landscapes. Research on one of the largest slum developments, known as Kibera, in Kenya provides a design study in which the addition of edible landscapes contributes to the neighborhood “njia” infrastructure. The term njia refers to the street paths and alleyways that bind the developments. When applied to the model of njia, the potential benefits of the incorporation of urban agriculture into the contextual vocabulary become clear. Designing edible landscapes as a feature of permanence in urban design situations provides the potential to address critical issues concerning development of housing, city planning, and food security.

Urban agriculture is increasingly recognized for its potential contribution to more sustainable urban development. Urban agriculture includes the cultivation and raising, processing and marketing of food and non-food crops, medicinal and aromatic herbs, fruit trees, as well as animal products within urban and periurban areas. Urban agriculture positively impacts urban food security, local economic development, environmental management and community building. To reconcile the demands posed by urban growth with urban agriculture activities of high social and economic value, urban agriculture however should be included into land use planning and design, and regulated by municipalities, assuring its proper management and avoiding potential health and environmental risks. Open and green urban spaces could be designed for multifunctional urban agriculture and combine natural habitat, food production, educational, recreational and leisure activities. Such design processes would benefit from broad participation of urban planners and architects, urban farmers, citizens and slum inhabitants as to enhance ownership and engagement, more effectively use available local resources and give the process a higher credibility and wider outreach. This article shares the experience of Rosario, Argentina where the city planners and University staff collaborated with two low-income communities in the design and implementation of a multifunctional neighborhood park, public square and road reserve. A step-by-step participatory design process was followed: starting from initial visioning, defining and relating the various existing and multi-functional land uses desired, to elaborating the site plan, and agreeing on implementation procedures. The article briefly contextualizes the site and its inhabitants, illustrates the design process and the results achieved and highlights some of the problems encountered. Participatory design of open spaces for urban agriculture in Rosario- though a complex process- proved to have contributed to improving socio-economic and environmental conditions in the city, while also serving as a source of inspiration to other cities in the region.

This paper investigates the adaptive capacity expressed by an agricultural region in response to changing conditions as a mean to address the future of cultural landscapes in a time of extreme uncertainty. Through the conceptual framework of biocultural diversity, the work assesses regimes shifts and persistence as a dialectic between natural and anthropogenic components of the landscape.

Specifically, the mechanisms of progressive landscape adaptation are explored by using an integrated method to align manifestations of biological and cultural diversity. Through a multidimensional approach applied to spatial analysis, the study determines a relationship between the footprint of past and modern landscape regimes and contemporary rural management practices in McLaren Vale, South Australia.

The biological and cultural diversity patterns along riparian corridors, or “biocultural corridors” are indicators of past and current adaptive capacity, which are able to convey novel trajectories of sustainable management in the landscape system.

Understanding the positive feedback loops between nature and human interactions as represented by their interrelationships in the landscape can inform planning decisions for sustainable agricultural development and enable effective regional long-term trajectories of resilience.

Strategies to enable alternative urban food systems cannot be developed alone by those involved with the production and distribution aspects of food systems. It is important for architects, landscape designers and planners to be part of the process of conceiving and implementing innovative food-system thinking. Environmentally focused building standards and models for sustainable communities can easily incorporate farmers' markets, greenhouses, edible landscapes, permeable paving, green roofs, community gardens, and permaculture and other food-related strategies that complement energy generation and conservation, green roofs, living walls, and other approaches that have been more commonly part of sustainable built-environment initiatives.

Recently, architecture faculty and students at Ryerson University in Toronto and at a number of other universities have been exploring the intersection of these disciplines and interests. This paper will show how Ryerson tackled agricultural and food issues as design challenges in projects that included first-year community investigations, student-run design competitions, third-year studio projects and complex final-year thesis projects. These projects that dealt with food issues proved to be excellent entry points for addressing a range of design challenges including social inclusion, cultural context, community design and sustainable building practices.

The Millennium Development Goals and Agenda 21 objectives have generated international research initiatives in the emerging field of urban agriculture (UA); these efforts in productive growing and food production in the urban domain are gaining pre-eminence. UA was first coined in the 80s by agro-economists who recognized informal gardening practices in southern cities (Ba et all), but it no longer is uniquely associated to the South. UA includes a broad rage of activities: the cultivation of plants, medicinal and aromatic herbs, fruit trees, and the raising of animals, poultry and fish to support the household economy, the site's ecology, as well as social and cultural activities. Thus, UA cuts across multiple disciplines - such as development, urban geography, food security, city planning, landscape architecture, urban design, housing, farming and agronomy - all of which are touched upon by the academic and professional contributors in this special issue of Open House International.