Keywords

1 Introduction

Scientific literature highlights how over the past decade, urban agriculture (UA) has received ever increasing attention in relation to its potential of generating positive impacts for resilience, self-reliance, and social, economic, and environmental sustainability of cities.

Urban agriculture can improve the resilience of urban systems through food diversification to the household level and it can further develop the local and global food market in support of economic stability. At the same time, UA can promote social resilience through the enhancement of socio-cultural ecosystem services, for instance, empowering young adults to understand and be aware of the role and contribution of urban agriculture to the urban communities and environment. These could be conceptualized as a significant driver for sustainability and resiliency for urban communities, which can exist at multiple scales with the diverse function of urban agriculture (Salleh et al. 2020).

UA appears as an effective means to address global warming while also fostering urban transitions to sustainability in many ways, such as creating new commons, amenities, ecosystem services, reinventing urbanity, and encouraging community building by growing local food. The development of urban agriculture in interstitial areas and other residual areas of the cities is also related to another one among the many challenges of sustainability that is a better use of already existing resources (Mancebo 2018).

Urban agriculture refers to the process of growing and distributing edible plants in both public and private places of a city. It may take the form of micro-farms, kitchen gardens, and community gardens, but it may also include medium to large-sized urban vertical farms (UVF).

According to these premises, STRAME research project has identified as a field of investigation the topic of small/medium UVF that in literature appears less developed than the issues of micro UA and mega vertical farms. This scale is assumed to be the focus of research due to the fact that small/medium UVF can be easily adapted to the interstitial spaces of cities and, if properly connected to each other, they can constitute a real urban infrastructure.

2 The Urban Landscape of Food

Long-term decreasing stock of agricultural land per capita is an emerging global problem and a challenge for the future. Statistics on the future growth of the world population from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reveal that arable land per person is projected to decrease by 2050 to one-third of the amount available in 1970 (FAO 2016). The urban land covered area is expected to increase by four times over fifty years, from 300,000 km2 in 2000 to 1,200,000 km2 in 2050 (Angel et al. 2011) reducing in the same time the usable area for agriculture. On the other hand, the increase of the world population requires a corresponding increase in agricultural and food production, and the capacity of the agri-food industry shall increase up to 70% by 2050 to meet the food demand (FAO, World Food Programme 2015). The per capita arable land worldwide is decreasing impressively: it was estimated at 0.42 ha in 1960, and the forecast is 0.19 ha in 2050. In many countries farming more land is no more an option (Silva 2018). A possible option is therefore to include urban areas as part of production systems and many cities already reuse abandoned properties as urban farms and cultivate their own fresh vegetables to feed their citizens (Avgoustaki and Xydis 2020).

The anticipated population growth by 2050, with an expected 70% of it living in the cities, forces a profound revision of recent efforts on food security and the means to accomplish it (Nelson 2010). What is the future of food production and food security within highly dense urbanized areas? What are the practices that could render an urban environment resilient and sustainable today? How productive sites could speak not only about contemporary food production but also of the wider socio-political relations that sustain it?

UVF could envision a more ‘entrepreneurial’ model of urban transformation, where former productive urban spaces, interstitial, parasitic, residual and undesirable places; i.e., brownfield and contaminated areas, tunnels, terraces of commercial complexes, viaducts, underpasses, odd juxtapositions and remnant spaces between train lines, highways, subways, abandoned industrial zones, transport hubs could emerge as the new productive and ecologically resilient areas and culinary corridors, that are adapted to contemporary alimentary needs and destabilizing climatic realities.

Furthermore, from an environmental point of view, UA has been associated with the creation of habitats for pollinators (Goodman and Minner 2019; Goddard et al. 2010); modulating microclimates and hydrology (Oberndorfer et al. 2007); productive redirection of wastewater, organic matter, and biosolids (Armstrong 2000); blocking atmospheric nitrogen (Herridge et al. 2008) and carbon (Beniston and Lal 2012) which would otherwise contribute to climate change; and stem the loss of agricultural land linked to peri-urban and suburban development (Haight et al. 2016). In addition, UVF practiced on a large scale in urban centers has the potential to allow year-round food production without loss of yields due to climate change or weather-related events and eliminate the need for large-scale use of pesticides and fertilizers (Despommier 2005).

To understand the productive dynamics of contemporary cities within rapidly changing and highly dense urban environments, it is not enough to look at the structural and economic questions alone—we must also investigate the visual languages, conceptual approaches, and morphological terms determined by diverse cultural and social-economical contexts. The need to investigate the potential application of UVF leads us to a study and analysis that calls forth the creation of new areas of urban food production but also the development of new typological hybridizations both on an urban and architectural level that signify a re-entrance for new patterns of production-consumption-distribution, a re-invention of new metabolic perspectives and symbiotic relationships.

3 The Research for an Intermediate Scale for Urban Agriculture

Urban agriculture has become a new form of cultural and social expression relating to land use (Langemeyer et al. 2021). Its application can lead to different forms of results, including social cohesion (Coles and Costa 2018), environmental education, and the enhancement of undesirable urban areas (Contesse et al. 2018) (Fig. 58.1).

Fig. 58.1
An illustration of urban green space, which includes urban planning, green space policy, profitable use, and urban value. Urban agriculture includes disused spaces, no profitable use, no policy, and unappealing spaces. The intersection between the 2 is also presented.

Identification of urban spaces for the application of urban farming scenarios

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The theme of urban agriculture is present in several research projects whose objectives are environment and resource efficiency, sustainable use of land and nature-based solutions, climate change adaptation, innovative nature-based solutions in cities, smart agriculture, and food resilience. Regarding these objectives, included in almost all research and funding programs of the European Union, it is possible to identify projects that, both for methodological approach and results obtained, can become crucial for the definition of urban planning strategies aimed at the integration of urban agriculture at the intermediate scale (Fig. 58.2).

Fig. 58.2
An illustration presents small, medium, and large urban farming projects for both non-marketable and marketable productions in private lots, streets, community gardens, rooftops, and black farms, along with various actors and interests.

Level, actors, and interests in urban farming projects

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The results of a review of projects funding in Europe (Fig. 58.3) show that tendencies most oriented to the urban scale can be found among projects funded within the Urban Innovative Actions program (UIA). This program is an initiative of the European Union that provides urban areas throughout Europe with resources to test new and unproven solutions to address urban challenges. Among the proponents of these projects, there is always a municipality, and their purpose is often to test new practices that can transform into policies in territorial planning. Over the years, the Life program has financed many projects related to agriculture. Some of these projects can be referred to as urban farming and vertical farming, but in general, most of them aim at developing or improving specific cultivation techniques. Within the Horizon program, many more projects focused on the theme of this research can be found. However, most of such initiatives are aimed at improving cultivation techniques and/or accelerating industrial production transition towards more sustainable models.

Fig. 58.3
A chart lists the number of projects examined, the overall budget, E U contributions in euros, and in percentage for life program, horizon program, U I A initiative, and Sus food project.

Summary of the reviewed projects

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One of the trends most observed in the projects examined is the focus on smart agriculture, also in the case of small-scale projects. The smart component is applied through diversified tools, which come from the new lifestyles and the tendency to control and govern agricultural systems to optimize their results (Fig. 58.4).

Fig. 58.4
A diagram presents several hexagonal-shaped structures of urban agriculture, which include the applications, platforms, networks, and I o T, along with their corresponding factors.

Urban agriculture and smart applications

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The intermediate scale, identifiable as the urban scale, shows considerable potential with social and environmental implications (Sullivan et al. 2019). On the social side, a process of raising awareness among citizens toward urban farming can be started. This is an opportunity that can generate income and new skills, or green jobs. Furthermore, resilient communities with more sustainable lifestyles can be activated. On the environmental side, the implications of urban farming processes at the intermediate scale are several and depend on the type of intervention implemented. Some of these implications are listed below:

  • Increased agricultural production without additional environmental impact.

  • Contribution to climate change mitigation by launching strategies that can limit the damage caused by atmospheric events.

  • Human health improvement, through high controlled agriculture productions, without the use of pesticides.

  • And finally, the possibility to proceed towards cities’ re-naturalization, considering that urban farming applications must be imagined as settlements that relate and interact with the context.

4 STRAME: An Urban Adaptive Infrastructure

The STRutture Agricole MEtropolitane (STRAME) concept aims at the development of a modular system to build interconnected vertical farms in urban areas with the objective to set up an urban infrastructure able to operate in two configurations:

  1. I.

    Routine operation: in this case, the urban infrastructure works as a set of distributed urban farms capable of providing food for consumption by local communities (at the scale of the neighborhood or block) or for the development of micro-businesses for the processing, sale, and delivery of vegetables.

  2. II.

    Emergency operation: the urban infrastructure works as a distributed cultivation system in the city that can be supervised and operated as a single entity (thanks to the presence of an IoT structure) by a city authority in the event of emergencies that could affect the food supply chain.

The STRAME concept will assume as meta-design constraints the following original features assumed in the research:

  • Vision: a constellation of modular UVF landmarks as a physical and digital infrastructure able to increase the resilience of cities and urban areas with respect to disruptive risk factors;

  • Scale: to develop a system at an intermediate scale between the mostly diffused micro individual farming and the mega vertical farms; the intermediate scale will allow the system to be more sustainable from a technical, economic, and social perspective;

  • Location: the UVF system is placed in “void” areas such as residual spaces—a latent incubator of the ecological (bio)diversity, often located in fringe areas—or in open spaces system of social and public housing districts, for a new urban sustainable landscape as a shared fragment of a collective conscience.

The cultivation system will be based on hydroponic methods which are very well known since they have been studied from mid of the nineteenth century and became widely applied from the first quarter of the twentieth century (Jensen 1997). The purpose is to reduce the need of agricultural soil, by checking all the climatic, water, plant nutrients, and luminous parameters within the vertical farm, or by exploiting LED light integration systems to provide the right hours of light and the right photonic flow intensity specific for each crop scheduled within the UVF.

A remote-control system, based on the features of the Internet of Things, will be developed during the research in order to manage most of the routine checks without the presence of personnel also with the purpose to reduce internal pollution with respect to the external environment. A system of photovoltaic panels will supply electricity, and a dehumidification system will allow a recovery of water for watering plants, regulating internal temperature and humidity.

Concerning the interconnection of the farms, a specific part of the research will be devoted to defining standards and ontologies to enable, on the one hand, interoperability among platforms and, on the other hand, inter-domain interaction. The project will study, at the level of an advanced prototype, an IoT infrastructure that federates the heterogeneous IoT systems building up the complex environment represented by a (possibly distributed) vertical farm while leaving the data ownership and sovereignty in the hands of data owners, by offering means for security and privacy control.

The system will be characterized by some distinctive features:

  • Operability: the vertical farm shall be easy to be operated by citizens and households, and therefore the technology adopted will be based on simplicity and easiness of use;

  • Maintainability: in order to keep the farms in a state to perform the required functions, the system design will take into account the maintainability factors;

  • Reversibility: the UVF modules will be designed in order to fulfill the requirements of reversibility intended as an uncertainty management factor that will allow to disassemble and move the modules if, on a middle time period, the requirements of the city will foresee to use the space of the UVF for other purposes (uncertainty management over time);

  • Modularity: the system will be designed according to a modular scheme in order to manage the uncertainty related to the conditions of application in different contexts (management of context uncertainty);

  • Interconnectivity: the modules will be equipped with an IoT infrastructure able to connect them with other similar modules in order to allow an overall vision of the productivity and availability of crops in the urban area, making easier the management of food supply in emergency scenarios;

  • Agronomic performance: the possibility of replicating the UVF system in any place, even in the absence of agricultural land, electricity, using condensation water to irrigate plants.

The key aims of the STRAME project are:

  • to increase the resilience of cities and urban areas in case of extreme events (pandemic, climate change-related issues or geopolitical events) providing—with the implementation of the urban vertical farms—a support for food supply continuity and microeconomic activities;

  • to improve the adaptation strategy for preparing the cities to face the future challenges caused by climate changes or pandemic outbreaks;

  • to encourage the creation of new jobs by proposing new business models for the construction, operation, and maintenance of the farms or for the set up of micro-businesses for the harvest, sale, and delivery of fruits and vegetables;

  • to overpass the limit of many IoT systems that are often single-scoped, disjoint systems are generally defined as IoT silos.