The domains of agriculture and urbanity have traditionally been perceived as mutually exclusive despite their extreme interdependence. In recent years, a burgeoning grass-roots movement has emerged with the aim of re-integrating agriculture into the life and health of the city. The time is ripe for yet more innovative spatial solutions to the possibilities surrounding food and urbanism. The Food Urbanism Initiative (FUI) aims to examine the overall impact of food on urban design and to study the potential of new architectural and landscape strategies for the integration of food production, processing, distribution and consumption in the contemporary city. This essay outlines a methodology for generating strategies to facilitate urban development that integrate both city life and food production cycles into a more harmonious coexistence that is socially, economically, and environmentally responsible. Using Switzerland as a point of departure, FUI explores the potentialities of Food Urbanism through its recent history and contemporary context. Four primary research groups comprise the multi-disciplinary team to explore the broad and wide-ranging issues inherent to the subject. The project aims to establish both innovative and feasible proposals for the purpose of grafting the domains of city and farm. The FUI methodology relies upon the development of a set of essential tools including a webportal, public opinion survey, urban mapping, prototyping and a series of pilot projects corresponding to multiple scales of proposed intervention. Food Urbanism proposals, programmes and projects are sprouting up across the globe and are providing valuable insight. FUI hopes to advance these efforts by thoroughly researching the movement and actively developing solutions to help reinforce the liaison between theory and practice, between architecture and agriculture, between city and farm.
Keywords: urban design, architecture, agriculture, landscape architecture, public space
