Agriculture and the city: A method for sustainable planning of new forms of agriculture in urban contexts

Contemporary cities are threatened by urban development decreasing the overall environmental quality and fragmenting natural and agricultural landscapes. As a result of this fragmentation the number of Non Urbanized Areas (NUAs) present in urban contexts is dramatically decreasing. These areas include cultivated land, Abandoned Farmlands, Grassland, Woods and Shrubs that are often located at the periurban cities' fringes. Among NUAs, farmlands and other forms of urban and pen-urban agriculture provide all three major categories of ecosystem services, provisioning, regulating and cultural services. Recently, New Forms of Urban Agriculture (NFUA) have gained increasing attention from researchers for their promising multifunctionality. Incorporating NFUA into the urban environment will thus improve the sustainability of cities, taking advantage of the multiple benefits and services they can provide. This paper presents a method for the characterisation of NUAs in terms of their physical, ecological and social features. These areas are analysed with different criteria and related indicators structured according to a GIS-based Multi Criteria Suitability Model. The proposed model checks the suitability of transformation of the NUAs toward NFUA, thereby enhancing their ecological and social function as well as accessibility and overall connectivity. Different scenarios of spatial configurations for NFUA have been explored with a sensitivity analysis on the values of used indicators. The method was tested for the municipality of Catania, south Italy, an urban context characterised by a relevant shortage of public green spaces and services. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.