Farming in and on urban buildings: Present practice and specific novelties of Zero-Acreage Farming (ZFarming)

Thomaier, Susanne; Specht, Kathrin; Henckel, Dietrich; Dierich, Axel; Siebert, Rosemarie; Freisinger, Ulf B.; Sawicka, Magdalena

doi:10.1017/s1742170514000143

Cited by 270 publications

(226 citation statements)

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“…ZFarming may include rooftop gardens, rooftop greenhouses (RTG) and edible green walls, as well as innovative forms, such as indoor farms and vertical greenhouses [4]. In recent years, ZFarming projects have increasingly been planned or established by nonprofit associations, commercial or semi-commercial start-ups and private initiatives throughout many cities worldwide [5]. Similar activities can also be observed in the city of Berlin, where projects are planned or implemented for both social and commercial purposes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Zero-Acreage Farming in the City of Berlin: An Aggregated Stakeholder Perspective on Potential Benefits and Challenges

et al. 2015

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How can buildings be combined with agricultural production and what are the major potential benefits and challenges for the introduction of zero-acreage farming (ZFarming) in Berlin from the relevant stakeholders' perspectives? These questions were explored through a series of interviews and stakeholder workshops held between 2011 and 2013. The aim was to identify the most suitable building-integrated farming model for the Berlin metropolitan area and to develop guidelines for the model's successful and sustainable implementation through a stakeholder-driven approach. This paper provides an aggregated synthesis of the outcomes derived from the qualitative interviews and stakeholder workshops. As the results reveal, the stakeholders perceive potential benefits and challenges related to the issue of ZFarming in all dimensions (economic, social, environmental and political). OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2015, 7 4512They largely agreed on the importance of focusing on local resources, using energy-efficient production-including social and educational aspects-and developing new market structures when introducing ZFarming to the city of Berlin. The stakeholders identified urban rooftop greenhouses (RTG) as the most promising farming model for Berlin. In a joint collaboration of all stakeholders, a manual for RTG was developed within the participatory innovation process that addresses the identified problems and challenges associated with future implementation and governance of RTG in Berlin and beyond.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 97%

Zero-Acreage Farming in the City of Berlin: An Aggregated Stakeholder Perspective on Potential Benefits and Challenges

et al. 2015

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“…In the case of Europe, existing studies focus on the technological feasibility or sustainability assessment of specific new forms of urban agriculture, such as rooftop gardens or rooftop greenhouses (Cerón-Palma et al 2012;Specht et al 2014;Thomaier et al 2015). Others estimate the general potentials and problems associated with urban horticulture (Eigenbrod and Gruda 2014), the urban agriculture effects on the environment (Sanyé-Mengual et al 2013, and the effect of urban agriculture on specific issues, including health issues (Säumel et al 2012;Antisari et al 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socially acceptable urban agriculture businesses

Specht

Weith

Swoboda

et al. 2016

Agron. Sustain. Dev.

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The rise of successful entrepreneurs in urban agriculture has attracted global interest. Here, we hypothesized that societal preferences and the acceptability of urban agriculture projects and products are ruling the success or failure of urban agriculture businesses. We surveyed 386 urban participants in Berlin, Germany, to identify general preferences for the productive use of urban space, the acceptance of different urban agriculture forms, and demands and expectations regarding urban agriculture products. The results show first that more than 80 % of the respondents preferred having accessible systems such as public green spaces, intercultural gardens, and rooftop gardens. Indeed, land uses that do not provide accessibility such as meadows, aquaponic farms, or intensive agricultural and horticultural landscapes showed lower acceptance, of less than 40 %. Second, 60 % of participants expressed acceptance of rooftop farming, agriculture in the urban fringe, or in inner-city brownfields, whereas 65 % rejected to have agriculture in multi-story buildings, agroparks, or aquaponic farms. Third, more than 50 % are willing to buy horticultural products, but they reject products from intensive production systems and animal-farming mechanisms, with more than 70 % rejection for animal products. Overall, this is the first study to investigate entrepreneurial urban agriculture possibilities from the perspective of potential consumers. The main insight is that the highest degree of acceptance is reached for multifunctional urban agriculture that combines commercial with ecological and social goals.As a consequence, projects that are purely production-driven or technologically intensive are more likely to be rejected.

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“…Another example involves combining building and greenhouse structures to reduce heating enegy requirements compared to standalone structures (Delor 2011). Vertical farming inside buildings or on their exterior walls has also been tried (Despommier 2011) but is far from routine, with only 44 vertical farming projects identified in all of North America as of a few years ago (Thomaier et al 2015).…”

Section: Current Building Design At the Few Nexusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resilient by design: the case for increasing resilience of buildings and their linked food-energy-water systems

Tien

2018

Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene

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The resilience of buildings and food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) to natural or manmade disruptions are closely linked. The resilience of a building goes beyond the safety of its structural elements and must include the resilience of its supporting systems and the services they supply. The resilience of FEWS, in turn, can increase through design elements of a building that affect generation and storage of FEW resources. In this commentary, I discuss increasing the resilience of buildings and their linked FEWS-improving their resistance, absorption, restoration, and adaptive capacities-through new integrated systems design practices. I begin with a discussion of the current state of building design at the FEW nexus. I then use the prior establishment and current use of sustainability design objectives as an analogue to developing and implementing resilience design objectives. I review progress and limitations of specific drivers for increasing resilient design practices, including economic incentives, regulations, extralegal programs and initiatives, and societal incentives. My recommendations for leveraging these drivers to increase resilient design include: for economic incentives, quantify the costs and benefits to make the business case for resilience; for formal regulations, specify increased building requirements with performance-based resilience objectives; for extralegal initiatves, integrate these resilience objectives with existing certification programs and award designs that address FEWS as an integrated network rather than as disparate systems; and for societal incentives, demonstrate public benefit to shift societal perceptions of resilience. Together, these actions will motivate the design of more resilient building and FEW systems to increase their longevity, performance, and robustness. Keywords:Resilience; buildings; food-energy-water systems (FEWS); design objectives; integrated systems; performance-based design; design practices and incentives School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, US itien@ce.gatech.edu Introduction Food, energy, and water systems (FEWS) are essential for the functioning, safety, and security of society. They provide critical resources and services for the population of a community. They are also characterized by interconnections and interdependencies, which can both support the performance of these systems, e.g., if outputs from one system can be leveraged for use in multiple systems; or expose the systems to additional vulnerabilities, e.g., if failures in one system cascade into losses for connected systems.Buildings are also critical to daily life. We live the majority of our lives in buildings, with Americans spending on average 87% of their time in enclosed buildings (Klepeis et al. 2001). Buildings and FEWS are inextricably linked, particularly for energy and water systems. Buildings serve as the final distribution points for most municipal energy and water systems. Once energy and water resources are generated...

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Farming in and on urban buildings: Present practice and specific novelties of Zero-Acreage Farming (ZFarming)

Cited by 270 publications

References 23 publications

Zero-Acreage Farming in the City of Berlin: An Aggregated Stakeholder Perspective on Potential Benefits and Challenges

Zero-Acreage Farming in the City of Berlin: An Aggregated Stakeholder Perspective on Potential Benefits and Challenges

Socially acceptable urban agriculture businesses

Resilient by design: the case for increasing resilience of buildings and their linked food-energy-water systems

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