Urban agriculture research: increasing food production for city sustainability

What is Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes (CPUL)?

In 1997, architects Katrin Bohn and Andre Viljoen initiated a process of design research investigating the integration of urban agriculture into cities. This led to a large body of work underpinned by their concept of Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes (CPUL). Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes is a design concept advocating the coherent introduction of interlinked productive landscapes into cities as an essential element of sustainable urban infrastructure.

Central to the Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes concept is the creation of multi-functional open urban space networks that complement and support the built environment. This strategy involves uniting existing open space and derelict sites into food-growing areas that connect city centres and communities with local farms. 

As well as identifying available land for cultivation in cities, Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes aims to get people discussing food production as part of everyday urban life. The pioneering concept is at the forefront of a global effort to design interconnected, successful, liveable and resilient cities. There are multiple social, economic and ecological benefits that can be realised by developing resourceful and equitable urban food systems; research shows that these can be enabled by the integration of urban agriculture as part of a city’s networked and productive landscape infrastructure. ICON magazine described Andre Viljoen and Katrin Bohn’s work as, "the trailblazer in British research [into urban farming…] which has been chewing at the question since before our combined emergencies made it fashionable."

Katrin Bohn established projects during her guest professorship at the Technische Universität, Berlin, including co-initiation of the Spiel/Feld Marzahn Project in 2011, which later won the Award for Biological Diversity in the national United Nations Decade contest. (Image, The Big Bed at Spiel/Feld Marzahn seen in 2011, Katrin Bohn.)

Successful architectural design books promote new urban farming concepts

From the earliest stages, Katrin Bohn and Andre Viljoen's work has tried to push the theoretical concept from the fringes of academia and practice to the mainstream public. In 2005, their book, Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes: Designing Urban Agriculture for Sustainable Cities, gained critical recognition for the Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes (CPUL) concept and endorsement from bodies such as the United Nations Institute for Advanced Studies, UNESCO and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). 

Between 2014 and 2016, Andre Viljoen led an AHRC-funded international network that extended the dialogue between practice-based researchers and policy makers, bringing the work to councils that sought practical change. 

Andre Viljoen and Katrin Bohn’s 2014 book, Second Nature Urban Agriculture, won the international 2015 RIBA President's Award for Outstanding University-located Research. One of its contributions was the four-step CPUL City Actions plan, a method for the long-term integration of CPUL into cities. It advocates conducting:

• ‘Inventories of Urban Capacity’ (IUC),
• top-down and simultaneous bottom-up collaboration (U+D),
• visualisation for scenario building (Vis)
• and continual research to evaluate actions (R).

The theoretical basis for Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes is now embedded in international design and research discourse, and Andre Viljoen and Katrin Bohn collaborate with cities and citizens to realise the CPUL concept in practice. The concept has shaped urban design theory through an understanding of the interconnectedness of city spaces; and has directly addressed practice and policy through engagement with local government bodies and citizens at sites in Europe and Japan. 

Katrin Bohn and Andre Viljoen were appointed as productive urban landscape and urban agriculture consultants in the urban masterplanning for Carthage, Tunisia.

Interconnected city spaces at the heart of urban farming through CPUL City Actions

By utilising the research findings and the four-step method, Bohn and Viljoen are now embedded in local authority-led planning and citizen partnerships that can apply the Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes concept.

CPUL City Actions have helped to enable the development of urban food policies by supporting the establishment of citizen groups and food policy councils. Nerima City, for example, a region of Tokyo with a population of 720,000, is testing University of Brighton-inspired designs to interconnect farmland and residential space.

Meanwhile, in Heidelberg, strategic design input into the International Building Exhibition’s beacon project has been incorporated into a post-event design masterplan that will redevelop urban space for sustainable future use. In the city of Andernach, Germany, Bohn and Viljoen’s work has been instrumental for the local council in a project to deliver the country’s first ‘edible city’. 

Through Viljoen and Bohn’s innovative design research, the concept of Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes has contributed not only to a new way of thinking about urban sustainability, but to practical and exemplary development, including the establishment of food policy councils in Berlin and Cologne, the developing of food hubs, and initiatives that deliver organic food to 50,000 students at 275 schools in Berlin.

The Kato Farm in Nerima City, Tokyo, is an example of resilient urban landscape and a socially embedded food system, whereby, in emergencies, small amounts of food from many produces can be sent to places in need. (Image courtesy of Bohn&Viljoen 2019).

Further examples of research excellence at the University of Brighton