A landscape-architectural study into implementing urban agriculture in the post-industrial city

Croproad Park is an landscape-architectural study into implementing urban agriculture* in the post-industrial city.

Half the world's population lives in cities. What with urbanization at full tilt and agriculture being industrialized, the countryside is transforming from a production to a consumption landscape. Cities depend on import, energy and transportation for the provision of food. Within the global network, consumers have no sense of the production of food, environmental issues and natural processes. Adding urban agriculture to public green space can improve this situation and contribute to the meaningful complexity of the urban fabric. Not just that, the predicted climate change requires modifications that green spaces in the city are able to provide.

Our planning area takes in the A9 motorway zone in Amsterdam-Zuidoost separating Bijlmermeer and Gaasperdam. The planned tunnel increases traffic capacity, creates new green space on its roof and encourages new urban developments.

The design is for an urban landscape where food can be produced and that doubles as a recreation area. By gives such prominence to fruit and vegetable cultivation and involving the local inhabitants, the new production park will work as well for the neighbourhood as for the city. Good physical connections are essential for distributing the harvest, providing attractive recreational routes and creating healthy ecological conditions.

The project proposes a framework containing a closed cycle for organic urban agriculture. The interventions are to ensure that a pleasant microclimate emerges. Other features of the plan include housing that is to bring improvement to the surrounding residential areas. All neighbourhoods stand to profit from the new park, informed as it is by dynamics and a natural rhythm. The steady processes of landscape act as a counterweight to the rapid processes of urbanization and contribute much to establishing a high-grade residential climate.

*urban agriculture = cultivating fruit and vegetables in a town or village, exploiting its resources and market in direct synergy and/or competition with urban green space and activities

Place of education: Wageningen Universiteit | Specialization: landscape architecture | Tutor: Ingrid Duchhart