FEW Workshop: "Scaling Up" Urban Agriculture to Mitigate Food-Energy-Water Impacts; October 5-6, 2015; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI

Regents Of The University Of Michigan - Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor MI

Investigators

Abstract

1541838 Newell With the majority of the worlds population now living in urban settings, cities have become dominant drivers in global food-energy-water (FEW) cycles. Globalization processes have intertwined cities with distant geographies through system interactions that include the exchange of food, energy, water, materials, and capital. Through food consumption, city and hinterland have become highly interconnected and interdependent. Growing awareness of the myriad impacts associated with this food production-consumption nexus has sparked an urban agricultural renaissance. The PIs propose an interdisciplinary urban FEW workshop to understand the potential ramifications of scaling-up urban agriculture on: 1) food supply and security; 2) water quality and re-use; 3) energy use; 4) ecosystem health; and, 5) equity and governance. Prior to the workshop, five working groups will prepare summaries regarding the state of knowledge, level of implementation, and interactions with other FEW systems. A sixth working group will evaluate the potential of an interdisciplinary urban metabolism modeling framework to assess urban FEW system interactions. These summaries will be presented at the workshop, where participants will further delineate scaling-up benefits, challenges, and transition pathways. To uncover linkages between physical, social, economic, and ecological systems, the project team and workshop participants include geographers, engineers, ecologists, biologists, earth systems analysts, complexity modelers, planners, computer scientists, public health policy experts, and others. Emphasis will be on identifying tipping points that can enable urban agricultural system transitions. Outputs from the workshop include a white paper and journal article, both of which will identify the fundamental research necessary for transitioning urban food-energy-water systems so that they are more integrated, sustainable, resilient, and equitable. FEW scholarship on urban agriculture is relatively well-developed but exists as largely disciplinary-bound research streams. Consequently, urban FEW system interactions are not well understood. Scaling-up urban agriculture will significantly reshape food, energy, and water flows both within the urban consumption boundary and beyond to more distal production geographies in highly complex ways. An integrative, holistic conceptual framework based on urban metabolism theory will enable the multiple disciplines involved with this challenge to evaluate the potential for scaling-up, identify factors that affect system performance, and contextualize complex, dynamic urban-rural FEW interactions. The PIs envision applying this adaptive framework through scenarios of changing condition, such as climate change mitigation and adaptation, resource dematerialization, and localization. Using an urban metabolism framework, the workshop will produce an articulated set of research needs that, if addressed, will shape the future of urban agriculture and enhance the sustainability and resilience of cities.