* food systems | Productive Urban Landscapes

Four aspects of the urban metabolism will be linked in COST Action Circular City: water, food, resource recovery and the built environment. (source: COST Action Circular City 2019)

First virtual meeting of COST Action Circular City

On Monday 29th June, COST Action Circular City held its first virtual workshop with 60 people from 29 countries participating. The day-long meeting was dedicated to starting the joint development of a Catalogue of Technologies for providing/recovering resources through nature-based solutions (NBS). Aim of the catalogue is to support efforts by municipalities and initiatives to…

A resilient food system will be distributed and evenly spread, so that, if shocks occur, small amounts of food from many produces can be sent to places in need. The Kato Farm in Nerima City, Tokyo, is a good example of how this resilient urban landscape may look and how it can be used. Socially embedded food systems working as part of a larger network, like this one, have much to offer as we rethink post Covid 19 and in the midst of climate change adaptation and mitigation. (image: Bohn&Viljoen 2019)

Thoughts on Covid-19, food and urban design

One month into the Covid19 lockdown It is now a month since the UK went into lockdown as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. Germany started a short while earlier and is now experimenting with a targeted relaxation of some measures. Nevertheless, we are all still socially isolating and no longer travelling, working patterns have…

Professor Uma Kothari, chair of the conference, introduces the theme of this year’s event. (source: RGS www 2020)

Joint abstract accepted for the Annual International RGS Conference

It is our pleasure to announce that our joint abstract, submitted to the Annual International Conference organised by the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) with IBG under the theme Borders, borderlands and bordering has been accepted. Our joint paper by Ferne Edwards (RMIT), Katrin Bohn (UoB) and André Viljoen (UoB) is part of the panel Food…

Cover of Bohn & Viljoen's chapter in the volume Achieving sustainable urban agriculture, edited by Johannes Wiskerke (source: Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing www 2020)

Building continuous productive (peri-)urban landscapes: New book chapter out

An invited book chapter by André Viljoen and Katrin Bohn, titled Building continuous productive (peri-)urban landscapes, has been published last week in a new book edited by Prof Johannes Wiskerke of Wageningen University, The Netherlands, and published by Burleigh Dodds Science Publishing. This volume, titled Achieving sustainable urban agriculture, reviews research on building urban and…

The Wynd, a pedestrianised retail and artisan-workshop street in the centre of Letchworth, is lined with two rows of fruit trees. (source: Katrin Bohn 2020)

How do we showcase the Garden City of the Future?

This is one of the central questions that a local team of city representatives, food activists and design researchers explored during last week’s two-day working meeting in Letchworth, UK. Joined by Vic Borrill, Brighton&Hove Food Partnership, and André Viljoen and Katrin Bohn, University of Brighton, as their consultants, the local team discussed visions for (food-)productive…

Mapping food and its producers in an urban district in the City of Cologne, Germany, as part of the DQE urban generation project Urbane Agrikultur in Köln-Ehrenfeld. (source: Dirk Melzer 2011)

Paper accepted for Anthropology and Geography conference

Katrin Bohn will be presenting at the Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present, and Future conference in London later this year. Her abstract was accepted for the panel Mapping the Edible City: Making visible communities and food spaces in the city which she is also co-convening with Dr Ferne Edwards (RMIT), Prof Andre Viljoen (University…

The Breast Milk of the Volcano by Unknown Fields, panellists with Smout Allen and Katrin Bohn (source: Unkown Fields www 2016-8)

INVITE: “Designing from a depleted world” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London

On Monday 27th January 2020, 6.30 — 8pm, the second public panel discussion accompanying the RA’s Eco-Visionaries exhibition will take place at the Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. The panellists, including Katrin Bohn, reflect on the impact of human action on Earth’s depleting resources and discuss…

Map of Berlin showing urban agriculture projects with an educational focus from the exhibition CarrotCity and Die Produktive Stadt. (source: FG Stadt & Ernährung (Prof. Bohn) TU Berlin, 2011)

Conference panel “Mapping the Edible City” attracts highest number of submissions

We are pleased to announce that our conference panel to this year’s Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present, and Future conference did attract the highest number of submissions of any of the proposed panels! This shows not only that “the urban food question” has secured an important place as a subject of research and critical…

Resource streams in urban metabolism. This diagram, drawn for the participatory PHVision project in Heidelberg, shows how food and the food system are located as part of other resource streams into and out of the city. (source: Katrin Bohn with Rachel Shotliff 2016)

New paper on urban agriculture published !

As part of COST Action Circular City, Katrin Bohn has co-published a new paper on urban agriculture as a keystone contribution towards sustainable cities in the journal Blue-Green Systems by IWA Publishing. The paper contends that ‘research and practice during the last 20 years has shown that urban agriculture can contribute to minimising the effects…

Preston Park Demo Garden, one of the visited projects and Brighton & Hove Food Partnership’s first spatial intervention in Brighton. (source: Brighton & Hove Food Partnership www 2019)

Letchworth Garden City team visits Brighton food provision projects

This Monday, Vic Borrill (Brighton & Hove Food Partnership) and Katrin Bohn (University of Brighton) welcomed visitors from Letchworth Garden City to the City of Brighton & Hove. As part of the Horizon2020 innovation action project EdiCitNet, the Letchworth team came to study community food projects in Brighton many of whom are linked to the…

International delegates and Nerima City officials drafting the declaration. (source: André Viljoen 2019)

Publication of the Urban Agriculture World Summit Declaration 2019

André Viljoen was one of the international guests invited to attend the 2019 World Urban Agriculture Summit hosted by the Mayor of Nerima City in Tokyo. Building on the earlier pre-summit in November 2018 and following an intensive exchange of ideas on best practices and visits to some of Nerima’s extensive urban agriculture sites, the…