Productive Urban Landscapes

Research and practice around the CPUL design concept

Irena Pivka and Brane Zorman of Cona Institute Ljubljana were shortlisted for the Museum of Walking's Sound Walk September 2020 Awards for their work Sandbox. (source: Irena Pivka www 2020)

Sound walks offer a new way to travel

Referring to the current Covid-19 pandemic, an article in last week’s Guardian newspaper reported about urban and landscape walking tours ‘at a time when many people are struggling to make it too far beyond their front door’. The featured sound walks are one of the activities that the Museum of Walking is heavily involved with,…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 20th November 2020

Roxana Triboi, one of our winners, shared details of her project on Urban Pastoralism. (source: Petrut Calinescu From the Series 'Living on the edge: Bucharest' 2017)
2

Productive Urban Landscapes blog celebration: The winners are…

Last month, we celebrated the publication of THE 100TH POST on this blog which happened somewhen in August 2020. We had invited our readers to send us their answers to the question “What is a productive urban landscape?” Thanks to everybody who responded with their thoughts or congratulations! It has been (is) a pleasure to…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 5th October 2020

Parzelle X specialises in landscape architecture and nature pedagogy. (source: Parzelle X 2020)

Berlin Senate competitive tender for community garden strategy

We are pleased to have heard today that a team led by landscape architecture practice Parzelle X and comprising Katrin Bohn as consultant was selected into the last round of a competitive tender by the Senate of Berlin. If successful, the team will be working for the next one and a half years with local…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 28th August 2020

Tim Rodber and Dominic Walker Greater London Agriculture (source: RIBA www 2020)

Rethink 2025 for our post-pandemic world (and London in 2045)

Yesterday, the RIBA Journal has announced three joint winners for the architectural competition Rethink 2025 set up as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic. The competition proposed that ‘Now more than ever, we need to design spaces and buildings that contribute to the health and wellbeing of everyone. Architects have a vital role to play…

Continue Reading

Andre Viljoen • 27th July 2020

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…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 30th June 2020

Food production, logistics and marketing near Castrop-Rauxel in the Ruhrgebiet (source: Ulrich Häpke 2020)

Urban agriculture as green infrastructure element in the Ruhrgebiet, Germany

Spatial planner Ulrich Häpke made us aware of an article he recently published in sub\urban, the German journal for critical urban research. His article, Urbane Landwirtschaft im Ruhrgebiet: Verdrängung und kreative Resistenz [Urban agriculture in the Ruhr region: Displacement and creative resistance], explores the changes to agricultural practices and spaces within the Ruhrgebiet due to…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 4th May 2020

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…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 20th April 2020

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…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 6th January 2020

Presentation of the results of one of the discussion tables by an urban gardener (source: Beatrice Walthall 2019)

First public presentation of the Platform Productive Urban Green

More than 30 people came to the first public presentation of “Platform Productive Urban Green – Design and planning of open green space” [Plattform Produktives Stadtgrün – Gestaltung und Planung des öffentlichen Grüns] which happened last week in Berlin’s Alte Zollgarage. After a brief welcome by a representative of Berlin’s (Germany) Senate Department for the…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 28th June 2019

Berlin develops a charta for its urban green

Last week, Berlin’s (Germany) Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection [Senatsverwaltung für Umwelt, Verkehr und Klimaschutz] started the second round of a particiaptory online process aimed at the development of a charta for its urban green [Charta für das Berliner Stadtgrün]. The Charta contains concrete aims and guidelines for the development of…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 16th May 2019

Participants discuss the potential use and usefulness of the new platform in several break-out sessions. (source: ScholzConstructors 2019)

“Platform Productive Urban Green” starts in Berlin

Thursday, 28th March 2019, marked the official beginning of Berlin’s new Platform Productive Urban Green [Plattform Produktives Stadtgrün]. This new website and communication format aims to engage the public and city officials in discussing the future of the capital’s open (green) urban spaces by focussing on distinct spatial typologies. The first of those is dedicated…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 29th March 2019

A Mulberry Tree in the London Borough of Hampstead (source: Museum of Walking / Peter Coles www 2019)

INVITE: Midweek Midday Mulberries this Wednesday 16th of January

This Wednesday, 16th of January, the Museum of Walking is inviting to one of its famous London lunchtime walking tours. Please meet at 12.30 pm at Belsize Park Underground Station for about an hour of exploring the wealth of London’s food-productive urban landscape. This is what the Museum of Walking says: This lunchtime walk starts…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 14th January 2019

M E R R Y _ C H R I S T M A S _ 2 0 1 8 !

We wish all our readers a peaceful and joyous festive season! If you have time between the years, we recommend a book Katrin was given by her friend Barbara: Wanderlust: A history of walking by Rebecca Solnit has already been written in 2002 yet many of its profound observations – if not all – on…

Continue Reading

Katrin Bohn • 24th December 2018

Collage image with people and pathway through wheat fields with buildings in the background. (Source: Agropolis Munchen 2022)

Agropolis Munich, Germany

Agropolis is an urban agriculture project which proposes to transform Munich’s food systems. The project won a competition launched by Department of Urban Planning and Building Regulation of the City of Munich in 2009. The proposal includes an urban haven of agriculture, recreation and education by utilising temporarily available space in Freiham. Freiham is a…

Continue Reading

Jasmine Cook • 2nd December 2017

Almere Oosterwold’s masterplan (source: MVRDV 2022)

Almere Oosterwold, The Netherlands

Almere Oosterwold is an experimental town development situated 30km east of Amsterdam. It became a municipality in the 1980’s and has since grown into a 1000 house community. The principle is ‘You can do (almost) anything you want, but you have to organise it yourself.’ The design of Almere Oosterwold includes 59% of the land…

Continue Reading

Jasmine Cook • 2nd December 2017

An illustrated map of Brighton central area highlighting potential food productive spaces. (Source: Dr Mikey Tomkins, 2022)

Brighton CPUL, UK

Andre Viljoen is leading up the seed project for the conceptualisation (and hopefully eventual implementation) of a Brighton CPUL, titled Seeing Urban Food Futures. Working with partners Lewes District Food Partnership, The Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, The Education Health and Wellbeing Community Interest Company, Dr Mikey Tomkins as well as members of the Brighton…

Continue Reading

Jasmine Cook • 1st December 2017

On the Brighton Greenway – vegetable beds and apartments to the left, wild flower patch and old locomotive track pillars to the right. (source: Jasmine Cook 2022)

Brighton Greenway, Great Britain

Brighton Greenway is a narrow strip of brown-turned-green spaces with a walking path through the centre. It leads from New England Road all the way to Brighton Station, though there are plans to extend it to the Preston Park area. The greenway runs mostly between 5-10 story apartment buildings. The central location and the heavy…

Continue Reading

Jasmine Cook • 1st December 2017

(source: International Bauausstellungen www 2022)

Emscher Park, Germany

Beginning in 1989, the declining industrial Ruhr region of Germany underwent a transformation as part of the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA) Emscher Park. After the closure of most industrial plants and mines, there were many open spaces left and much wasteland. The IBA Emscher Park project was initiated by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with the aim to repair…

Continue Reading

Jasmine Cook • 2nd October 2017

Illistration of a perspective of someone's view outward at agriculture and the Thames as they eat. (Source: Future Architecture, 2021)

Greater London Agriculture, UK

During first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) launched the architectural competition Rethink: 2025. Considering the role of architectural industry in shaping a better post-pandemic world, architects and students were asked to think of life in 2025 and submit positive and tangible responses to issues arising from the pandemic, specifically…

Continue Reading

Jasmine Cook • 2nd September 2017

Map of the Green C. (Source: Freude Joy Joie Bonn 2022)

Green C Project, Germany

The Grünes” C or Green C project, covers almost 4 hectares of area with the aim to protect, connect and enhance open spaces across the municipalities of Alfter, Bonn, Bornheim, Niederkassel, Sankt Augustin and Troisdorf. Beginning as a pilot project in 2005 the Green C project focuses on nature conservation, preservation & development of agriculture and…

Continue Reading

Jasmine Cook • 2nd September 2017

1 2 3
Viewing Message: 1 of 1.
 Notice

We use cookies to personalise content, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. Read our detailed cookie policy