The Common Foodscape: Improving the liveability of the city through urban agriculture

Food is a vital part of our lives and throughout history it has shaped our cities. However, our current agricultural practices exhaust our natural environment and are threatened by climate change. Next to that, the design of our food system is highly susceptible to global instabilities. With the population only increasing and more people living...

Vertical Farming in the Netherlands: Towards a Circular Food System: A Business Ecosystem Perspective

The world’s current food system is unsustainable and considering the increasing human population, there is a demand for innovations in the circular food production. Simultaneously, food security be­ comes a topic of interest as greenhouse gasses cause more extreme weather conditions. Vertical farming potentially plays a vital role in the food...

Synergising Architecture: Integrating Food System Processes with Urban Functions Towards Liveable and Sustainable Agri-Food Business Parks in Westland

Food has played an important role in shaping our metropolitan regions, such as Westland in South Holland, The Netherlands. The industrialisation and globalisation of agriculture in Westland has prioritised economy and efficiency, creating issues of liveability and sustainability. The market-driven expansion of the agri-food industry has...

Every purchase counts: Creating awareness by involving consumers in the impact of their food choices

The Dutch food system nowadays is more efficient than ever and is able to feed many. However, this globalized and industrialized food system cannot be sustained in the next eras, because of its high contribution to biodiversity loss, the emission of greenhouse gasses and the fast decrease of soil health. System change is needed to move our food...

From resource draining to maintaining

The area of Amstel III will drastically change by 2040 into a lively urban district. This change allows for the rethinking of the urban metabolism of the area, to shorten the material cycles and by better utilization of resources. Through estimation and calculations on potential flows related to energy, water, and organic material the potential...

Circular Urban Agriculture in The Hague: Where We Are and Where We Could Go

Cities account for approximately 75% of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. This, along with the fact that cities also account for 75% of natural resource consumption and 50% of global waste production, makes urbanization a world-wide issue (Sukhdev, Vol, Brandt, & Yeoman, 2017). Additionally, the widely-practiced urban linear economic structure...

Food Island: Creating a Resilient Food System for the AMA

Governments and private and non-profit organisations from international to local levels have acknowledged the idea that more sustainable systems are required to reduce our ecological footprint (WWF, 2016, Jonkhoff, 2012). The food system is a very important aspect within our lives, socially as well as economically but it is also one of the most...