Dominique Giacomini

The expansion of urban area in a sustainable way and an increased food demand are affecting the design of future cities. Therefore, the questions discussed in this blog are a) What could future cities look like and b) How could agricultural food production be integrated into a city?

Recent circumstances have made most of us question the way we live(d) more than ever. Doing what we want to and moving around in public without social restrictions has become a privilege and therefore even more precious than before the current crisis. The longing for social not-distancing and for time in nature show how indispensable both are for us. Hopefully this rude awakening has opened our eyes enough in order to reset our collective values for future, hopefully better times in a redefined normality.

Future cities – future values

The question emerging out of this is how to incorporate these values into the design and the planning of future (mega-)cities. Urban areas should enable the living of collective values and enable social, environmental and economic sustainability. The design and implementation of future cities is a widely discussed area, not only for city planners or real-world-labs such as the Hunziker-Areal Mr. Stauffacher presented in the beginning of the lecture series “The SDG’s in context”, but of course also for architects generally. My research for the design and implementation of future cities lead me to Vincent Callebaut, a Belgian architect based in Paris. He was awarded amongst the top 50 “World Green Architects” by the Time Magazine, referenced as the best visionary and eco-prospective architect, addressing the worlds environmental and social issues in his work. His portfolio consists of buildings producing their own power, vertical food farms, pollution-removing towers and boats and even floating cities. In his work he makes use of bioclimatic rules like renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines, thermal and photovoltaic solar energy, geothermal energy, rainwater recycling or solar cycle and wind directions. Taking a closer look at his projects it becomes clear how his designs have the potential to address several pillars of The UN Sustainable Development Goals such as the sustainable urbanization i.e. the provision of green spaces, air quality of cities and many more. Under the name of “archibiotect” Callebaut defined a new, transdisciplinary approach to architecture; Realizing his projects together with scientists and engineers it once more reminds me of Stauffachers presentation, emphasizing the importance of transdisciplinary approaches for future development and achievement of the sustainable development goals. The word archibiotect is put together with the words Architecture + Biotechnologies + Technologies for Information and Communication.

Callebaut states that (…) In 2050, we will be 9 billion human beings on our blue planet, and 80% of the world population will live in megacities. It’s time to take action against climate change, to invent new eco-responsible lifestyles and to incorporate nature into our cities (…) To me, the idea of bringing nature or more green space into cities to make them an abundant space for relaxation, recovery and wellbeing overall, is attiring in many ways. Not only it addresses the SDG Nr.3 of Good Health and Wellbeing, but also it could reduce the vacation-traffic of citizens off to more natural, sometimes remote, places in order to find a quiet  space away from the busy city-life. This could contribute to the reduction of Greenhouse Gases (GHG), mainly of CO2, by reducing aviation traffic supporting the decarbonization of this industry, which is imperative to achieve the net zero target, according to Patrissa Eckle’s presentation about “Decarbonizing industry”. Talking about GHG’s, this leads me to my second question; Megacities – Megapopulation – mega-food-production? Since the agricultural sector is a big player in global GHG – emissions and the growing population will require a higher food production, the sector puts up a major challenge to the achievement of the net zero goal.

Future food production – urban food production?

The population is expected to increase and with it, the demand for food. Today, 50% of the habitable land is used for agriculture, 77% of this for livestock-production and 25% for crop production¹. The urban area is expected to increase by 48 – 100 Mha until 2030. Along with the increasing area for food production, this expansion will happen at the cost of ecologically sensitive areas, since the expansion into other areas has already reached its limits imposed by climate and soil conditions². Thus, it is of vital importance that the agricultural sector uses the existing productive areas more efficiently instead of expanding them³. Given the land scarcity, growing food demand and simultaneously increasing urban area it is imperative that the food production will have to find make its way into cities to a greater extent. The discourse around urban plant production is already ignited and different approaches such as urban gardening or vertical farming systems are more and more part of urban spaces. However, since livestock-production occupies the biggest amount of habitable land, the focus should be on how to bring livestock-production into cities in a sustainable way. In Switzerland, the area for livestock can mostly be divided into a housing area and a free range, outside-area. See the cows grazing on green, savory pasture or chicken scrabbling dry grounds? It’s hard to imagine those animals doing the same in our cities, isn’t it? Future research on creating animal-friendly, sustainable production systems in urban area will face many challenges such as space-scarcity, animal welfare and animal waste. As an idea of how urban livestock-production could possibly look like, I would like to shortly introduce a project called “Second Livestock” from US researchers, which I discovered in the MAK – Museum for applied arts in Vienna some time ago. You might now ask yourself why a project on livestock-production is represented in a museum for art? The connection here is that it is a transdisciplinary project between designers, engineers and agronomists on virtual reality (VR) for livestock. The idea is simple: By providing chicken with a VR-mask, leading them to believe that they are moving around in the outsides whilst actually keeping them in a vertical farming system, the physical space for free-range livestock can be reduced. With this, the idea addresses the scarcity of space in a quite unconventional way. Furthermore, the “Second Livestock”-System includes “Waste Zero production facilities”; Creating the smallest footprint possible by filtering water and air, integrating a waste collection system and upcycling it for fertilization – The inventors emphasize that these features allow this system to be integrated into cities. The integration of such systems into cities also reduces the fuel used for the transportation of the animals from remote farms to slaughterhouses and markets in cities. The facilities are prefabricated and use the most efficient electronical systems, it says on the description that can be found on the projects’ website. “Heat generated by the animals and machinery is put to use to heat or cool the building as needed.” As promising this sophisticated idea might seem, it is also a very costly one. It is an approach that can be considered for affluent, industrialized countries but is certainly not a solution that can be implemented all around the globe.

There is no “one size fits it all” for the integration of agriculture into urban areas. Challenges such as the amount of available space and animal welfare are decisive for the design and implementation of it. Both perspectives, the architects point of view on sustainable city-design and the one of urban food production give an idea of the complexity and interdisciplinarity of (future) cities in their role in sustainable development.

Vincent Callebaut: Paris Smart City 2050

Looking at Callebaut’s future Paris seems like gazing at a visualization of a city from a science- fiction movie about a different world. At the same time, with the knowledge of the research and general work that is put into the creation of a better, more sustainable future it seems to become more and more realistic  As Callebaut says: (…) It’s not a trend. It’s a necessity! To think outside of the box, to shake up the old structures. To make society evolve is the most difficult thing to do in this world…but it is possible step by step (…). Maybe, to come back to where I started, exceptional circumstances like the current crisis we are experiencing have the potential to make us reflect our ways. They show us, that major changes and adaptions are possible, if we are forced (or willing enough respectively), to make them. The ongoing crisis demonstrates that a threat is not threatening enough, until it knocks on our door and leaves us no choice but to accept it and restrict our behavior in order to escape from it. Let’s hope that the global acknowledgement of the climate crisis won’t take much longer, since the threat of climate change has been knocking on our doors for a long time now.

References

Ecke, P., (2020): Decarbonizing industry. Lecture series “The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Context”, ETH Zurich.

2: Gerber et al. (2010). Livestock in geographic transition. Livestock, Environment and Development (LEAD), Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO): Asner et al. (2004)

3: Lambin, E. F., & Meyfroidt, P. (2011). Global land use change , economic globalization , and the looming land scarcity, 108(9).

Stauffacher,M., (2020): Transdisciplinary research and learning for sustainable development in real-world labs (Reallabore). Lecture series “The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Context”, ETH Zurich.

Internet:

1: Our World in Data: https://ourworldindata.org/land-use, accessed 03.03.2020