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

tContemporary cities are threatened by urban development decreasing the overall environmental qualityand fragmenting natural and agricultural landscapes. As a result of this fragmentation the number ofNon Urbanized Areas (NUAs) present in urban contexts is dramatically decreasing. These areas includecultivated land, Abandoned Farmlands, Grassland, Woods and Shrubs that are often located at the peri-urban cities’ fringes. Among NUAs, farmlands and other forms of urban and peri-urban agriculture provideall 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 theirpromising multifunctionality. Incorporating NFUA into the urban environment will thus improve thesustainability 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, ecologicaland social features. These areas are analysed with different criteria and related indicators structuredaccording to a GIS-based Multi Criteria Suitability Model. The proposed model checks the suitabilityof transformation of the NUAs toward NFUA, thereby enhancing their ecological and social function aswell as accessibility and overall connectivity. Different scenarios of spatial configurations for NFUA havebeen explored with a sensitivity analysis on the values of used indicators. The method was tested forthe municipality of Catania, south Italy, an urban context characterised by a relevant shortage of publicgreen spaces and services.