7. Conclusion

7. Conclusion:

This dissertation will conclude by re-examining urban landscapes through systems of vertical farming and urban agriculture which would form a more resilient, cyclic and self-sustained microcosm of human development, namely the city.

Although the scope of large scale urban farming by designing productive landscapes and vertical farms in the city is enormous, and would significantly affect the food quality, economy, skyline, social functions, ecological landscapes and biodiversity in the city, the effectiveness of these systems would largely depend on the level of implementation and how influential it can be.

Naturally sustained ecosystems always have a cyclical metabolism like for example, the energy cycle between the producers, the consumers and the decomposers. These cycles have been existing on earth have been flawlessly accurate till present date. If only urban systems could have such a cyclic (closed loop) system. Then one can expect cities to be sustained till the furthest future one could ever imagine. Re-envisioning the urban environment as a cyclic system through agrarian urbanism, instead of the linear metabolism it had always been – characterised by the city‘s insatiable appetite for natural resources and the substantial amount of waste production.- has been the prime goal of urban and vertical farming systems.

Just as naturally sustained ecosystems, cities can also be considered as ‗complex adaptive systems‘ that have the ability to evolve in response to stimulus wherein the stimulus mainly refers to the process of new experimentation, development and adaptation, sociological acceptance and further implementation.

As long as the vision for the future is urbanised totally vertical farming and CPULs could really act as an emerging trend for space management, food

production, resource management, communal unification, with further developments in the economic and ecological scenarios of urban spaces.

The end question is of how best to facilitate this shift in farming practices so that a more resilient and self-sustained urban community presents itself. We must see to it that urban planning expands with the scope of agrarian urbanism in order to include within it, a cyclic urban metabolism. Exploration and further research on vertical farms and continuous productive urban landscapes must be encouraged to evolve a viable statistics to prove the further feasibility of such ideas. Consequently this can lead to informed by-law amendments and zoning changes that could encourage structures that contribute to urban cyclic metabolism. It is only through this process that we come to realize that we must first learn to manage our industrial ecology for effectively managing our natural environment.

By bringing our agricultural process closer to our cities and creating a symbiotic relationship between the two, we are able to create a more sustainable urban environment, challenge our current industrial agricultural system, and educate our population about food to create a generation of more self-reliant people.