The CPUL concept proved popular among conference presenters

With great interest did Katrin listen to fellow presenters at the 9th international conference of the AESOP Sustainable Food Planning Group which was held two weeks ago at the Universidad Politecnica in Madrid. Mostly attending the conference track “Agroecological urbanism”, we would like to capture here a number of papers presented that explicitly linked to our own work on Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes (CPUL).

Ivonne Weichold, an architect, lecturer and PhD candidate at University of Luxembourg, presented Agricultural Landscapes of Densification. The Case of Luxembourg, a project aiming for a guideline for the government on where to develop built settlements ‘in a country that otherwise will develop anywhere’. The CPUL is quoted as an example for building development that allows for agricultural and urban uses.

Christoph Kasper from the Technical University Berlin presented Food Planning Matters – Towards an Integrated Approach for a Sustainable Rural Urban Nexus, centred around a project that showcases integrated approaches for a viable relationship between rural and urban areas and demonstrates linkage points to global sustainable land use in the context of urbanisation. The CPUL concept forms part of it 50-strong international case study collection.

Alexandra Doernberg from the German Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) spoke about Exploring food in the urban food-water-energy-nexus: innovations and policies for resilient and sustainable urban development. She positioned her research on the contention that the ecological footprint of a dense city can be lower than the one of a rural area. CPULs are again quoted as a possible way to implement and upscale food-focused spaces in cities.

For the book of abstracts of the conference see here.

For information on the AESOP Sustainable Food Planning Group see here.

Image: From the project brochure of the project Rural Urban Nexus – Global Land Use and Urbanisation that Christoph Kasper presented (source: Umweltbundesamt www 2016)