Food Urbanism; Typologies, Strategies, Case Studies

Abstract

Food landscape architecture, with all its benefits for the community, biodiversity, and city, is like a trap or swamp in which any landscape architect would be crippled. The diversity of sites, growers, scenarios, and strategies – along with the lack of portfolios for built and unbuilt examples – are crucial limitations of the edible landscape. Interestingly, Food Urbanism; Typologies, Strategies, Case Studies brings together all the components of edible landscape architecture (industrially and politically) for the first time in a coherent and logical form. The book is authored by Craig Verzone and Cristina Woods, who investigate how urban agriculture can be utilized as a programmatic component in the development of landscape projects and urban planning. In this work, they offer insight into the interaction between urban food and landscape systems by defining how cities might integrate agriculture into urban rehabilitation and expansion. Food Urbanism is based on field research and an understanding of how urban agricultural spaces are designed. The authors follow a design research technique that is based on Verzone Woods Architects’ expertise in delivering urban projects in Switzerland, as well as their creativity, context reading, speculation, and scenario creation tools. While the architectural manifesto has a long history of articulating and supporting a single landscape architect’s future vision, Food Urbanism strives to incorporate a large body of external research and presents an exemplary model of this design-research-based approach.