Global urbanization and food production are in direct competition for land. This paper carries out a critical review of how displacing crop production from urban and peri-urban land to other areas – because of issues related to soil quality – will demand a substantially larger proportion of the Earth’s terrestrial land surface than the surface area lost to urban encroachment. Such relationships may trigger further distancing effects and unfair social-ecological teleconnections. It risks also setting in motion amplifying effects within the Earth System. In combination, such multiple stressors set the scene for food riots in cities of the Global South. Our review identifies viable leverage points on which to act in order to navigate urban expansion away from fertile croplands. We first elaborate on the political complexities in declaring urban and peri-urban lands with fertile soils as one global commons. We find that the combination of an advisory global policy aligned with regional policies enabling robust common properties rights for bottom-up actors and movements in urban and peri-urban agriculture (UPA) as multi-level leverage places to intervene. To substantiate the ability of aligning global advisory policy with regional planning, we review both past and contemporary examples where empowering local social-ecological UPA practices and circular economies have had a stimulating effect on urban resilience and helped preserve, restore, and maintain urban lands with healthy soils.@en

How can we transform urban environments to encourage durability and mediate the social price of myriad risks and vulnerability? Our work here is to build a bridge from archaeology to mainstream architectural and design theory. The study of places, landscapes, and regions links the two fields. Architecture can be shaped and enhanced by the long-term cultural and geographic perspective afforded by archaeology; architecture can offer archaeology a ride into the future. The bridge unites three domains: material, social, and aesthetic. We look to the past to find material technologies—new engineering and conceptual solutions to an array of problems—and the past obliges with many examples.@en