Urban horticulture

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"Onions, kale and hops" - raised bed project at the Hanseatenhof in downtown Bremen , 2017

Urban Horticulture , and urban gardening , is the most small-scale, horticultural use of urban land within settlement areas or in their direct environment. The sustainable cultivation of the horticultural cultures, the environmentally friendly production and a conscious consumption of the agricultural products are in the foreground. Urban horticulture is a special form of horticulture. Due to the urban population growth with a simultaneous reduction in arable land as a result of climate change or through flight from rural civil war regions to safe cities, it is also gaining in importance for poverty reduction .

Functions

Urban horticulture has experienced growing interest in recent years due to the following aspects:

  • Local food production and consumption can reduce transport routes (and thus carbon dioxide emissions ). In particular, the use of greenhouses can optimize yields on limited cultivation areas and save energy.
  • Integration of agriculture and the urban way of life into natural material cycles through local recycling of compostable waste and sewage
  • The increasing interest in local food production fits into the general social movement, which is grouped around the knowledge, upgrading or preservation of local specialties (e.g. slow food ).
  • There is a growing need for food that is produced in an environmentally friendly and socially fair manner, which is often attempted to be achieved through self-production or local purchase.
  • In poor countries, urban residents are given subsistence farming opportunities . Such projects are supported by international organizations.
  • Bridging bottlenecks in the supply of urban areas with food.

In addition to the (partial) supply of locally grown products, gardening in the city also has other effects: improving the urban microclimate, contributing to biodiversity , sustainable urban development as well as education and awareness-raising for sustainable lifestyles. Gardening creates encounter, community and commitment to the district.

history

Ideal scheme of the arrangement of the land use zones in the Thünen model
World War II- era American advertising poster promoting so-called Victory Gardens.

Urban horticulture has been practiced since cities existed. Due to the short shelf life of many foods, it was not possible to transport them far until the improvement in transport options that began in the second half of the 19th century. For this reason, cities usually had neighborhoods in which fresh fruit and vegetables were produced (market gardens). The German landowner and economic geographer Johann Heinrich von Thünen developed a land use model (the so-called Thünensche Rings ) in the 19th century , which weighed the demand of the urban population and the transport costs and possibilities. A rationally acting population grew perishable food quickly in the immediate vicinity of the cities, which could fetch high prices in the city's markets. The more transportable a food was, the further away it was grown from the sales markets.

A number of perishable foods were in such high demand that despite the limited and expensive space available, they were grown in cities. In Paris, for example, in the second half of the 19th century, the city gardens were located in the Le Marais district, which today corresponds to the 3rd and 4th arrondissements. An estimated 8,500 independent gardeners cultivated fruit and vegetables on around 1,400 hectares, one sixth of the urban area of ​​Paris. The annual yield is estimated at 100,000 tons. The dependency of the urban population was also discussed during wartime. In the United States of America, Canada, Great Britain and Germany, the population was asked to use every available area for growing food ("Dig for Victory"). In English-speaking countries, this form of horticulture was called Victory Gardens .

Today, urban horticulture is once again receiving more attention. Supermarket stocks, especially perishable goods, are designed to sell within three days. The blockade of transport routes during a strike by British truckers and farmers in 2000 and natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have shown that large cities experience massive supply shortages after three days if they are cut off from the surrounding area. Ewen Cameron, Baron Cameron of Dillington , the head of a commission that examined the supply situation in British cities on behalf of the British government, described the failure-prone supply situation with nine meals from anarchy (nine meals to anarchy).

At the Humboldt University in Berlin , the first professorship for urban horticulture (since 2009 urban ecophysiology of plants ) in Germany was established at the Faculty of Agriculture and Horticulture in the Institute for Horticultural Sciences . In Bamberg, the federally funded model project urban horticulture is intended to strengthen the existing structures within the city and serve as a model for future projects.

Examples of contemporary urban horticulture

Urban horticulture can improve susceptible supply situations in cities:

  • In Moscow and St. Petersburg - both cities in which the population repeatedly experiences poor food supplies - 65 and 50 percent of the city's population grow part of their food themselves.
  • In Cuba, the collapse of the Soviet Union, hitherto its most important trading partner, led to far-reaching supply problems. Until then, by selling sugar to the Soviet Union at prices above world market levels, Cuba was able to finance the import of two thirds of the food it needs, all of its oil needs, and 80 percent of its agricultural machinery. In Cuba, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, supplies for the population were switched from large farms that rely on the use of tractors to organoponicos , small farms in or on the outskirts of cities. At the beginning of the 21st century, 90% of the fresh food sold in Havana came from organoponicos that neither rely on large agricultural machines nor require a lot of oil to transport their products to consumers.
  • Well-known examples of contemporary urban horticulture include two projects in the US state of California. The later evacuated South Central Farm was built by Latin American immigrants whose impoverished neighborhood was undersupplied with supermarkets. They used an urban wasteland for growing fresh food and as a social meeting point. In the long term, the Fairview Gardens Farm in a suburb of Santa Barbara was more successful and was one of the first agricultural growing areas in the USA to be protected.

  • Growing lettuce in an urban community garden (Springfield Park, Clapton, North London)

  • In the Inselgarten (2016) on the Rote Insel in Berlin-Schöneberg , the raised beds are awarded in several languages. The joint project aims to support integration.

  • Mobile community garden with a typical raised bed made from converted pallets.

  • Raised bed project at the Hanseatenhof in downtown Bremen , 2017

  • Green space in public space in Vienna managed by individuals

to form

literature

Movie

  • 2008: The Garden , Oscar-nominated documentary about South Central Park
  • 2017: Christian Beyer: Harvest what you sow. Transition Bamberg, accessed on March 11, 2020 . Film about the establishment of the first self-harvest garden in Bamberg.
  • 2018: Gerhard Hagen: Not just licorice rasps and onion treadmills. Gardening tradition in Bamberg. SEHDITION. Publisher for Sights, accessed on March 11, 2020 .
  • 2019: Frankenrundschau / BR: The "new" Bamberg gardeners in the self-harvest garden: Hobby gardeners with vegetables

Web links

Commons : Urban agriculture  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christian Ulrichs: Urban Horticulture - a young science: VDL-Journal, magazine for agriculture, nutrition, environment . 2006, 3 (56): pp. 12-13.
  2. ↑ a b City Farming. Urban gardening in Monrovia, Liberia. Film by Roland Brockmann. Welthungerhilfe, 2012, online , accessed on August 15, 2012
  3. ↑ Brian Halweil, Thomas Prugh: Home grown: the case for local food in a global market ., 2002
  4. ↑ Katsumi Ohyama, Michiko Takagaki, Hidefumi Kurasaka: Urban horticulture: its significance to environmental conservation . In: Sustainability Science 3, 2008, pp. 241–247.
  5. ^ MN Rojas-Valencia, MT de Orta Velasquez, Victor Franco: Urban agriculture, using sustainable practices that involve the reuse of wastewater and solid waste . In: Agricultural Water Management 98, 2011, pp. 1388-1394.
  6. ↑ Michael Nairn, Domenic Vitello: Lush Lots. Everyday Urban Agriculture . Harvard Publications, 2010.
  7. ↑ FAO: Growing greener cities. FAO projects, online, accessed August 15, 2012.
  8. ^ Carol Steel: Hungry City - How Food shapes our Lives , pos. 1306.
  9. ↑ Jennifer Cockrall-King: Food and the City - Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution , p. 82.
  10. ↑ Jennifer Cockrall-King: Food and the City - Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution , p. 83.
  11. ↑ Jennifer Cockrall-King: Food and the City - Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution , p. 30.
  12. ↑ Jennifer Cockrall-King: Food and the City - Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution , p. 31.
  13. ↑ Jennifer Cockrall-King: Food and the City - Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution , p. 29.
  14. ^ Department of Urban Ecophysiology of Plants at the HU zu Berlin
  15. ↑ Jennifer Cockrall-King: Food and the City - Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution , p. 107.
  16. ↑ Jennifer Cockrall-King: Food and the City - Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution , p. 285.
  17. ↑ Jennifer Cockrall-King: Food and the City - Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution , p. 286.
  18. ↑ Jennifer Cockrall-King: Food and the City - Urban Agriculture and the New Food Revolution , p. 144.
  19. ↑ The "new" Bamberg gardeners in the self-harvest garden: Hobby gardeners with vegetables | Frankenschau | BR. Retrieved June 10, 2020 .