Back To Field Zhou Yue, China
AERIAL PERSPECTIVE: DIFFERENT BUILDING TYPOLOGIES FOR URBAN FARMING
“Modern urban farming in an
Sustainable Urban Dynamics
ancient irrigation town!”
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As a city with a long agriculture history and a great irrigation system, Dujiangyan has a great potential of urban farming. It is well-known that urban farming can bring people a lot of benefits as well as a good way to achieve diverse sustainability. However, according to the research, two more unique reasons for Dujiangyan were found. Firstly, Dujiangyan has a large group of aging people, who have some memory about agriculture, meanwhile, because of the earthquake in 2008, many old people lost their old neighbors after living in a new placement housing by lottery. Therefore, urban farming is a way to help them to kill the time after retirement and build a new relationship in the community. Secondly, due to the fast urbanization in China, thousands of farmers become city citizens and move to city, so they need to find jobs to earn a living for their
family. But a research shows that it is hard for them to find a good job in city and some of the people just stay at home without any jobs. So, for these group of people, urban farming can be a tool to help them improve their life qualities and support their families. Back to field is a famous Chinese reality show, which expresses Chinese people’s wishes of living in the countryside with friends and families. In my vision, what I want to do more is how to help the elderly people to rebuild their social life and strengthen the relationship between society, young people and themselves. What’s more, using urban farming as a tool to help the farmers who lost their land to go bake to field and back to their original job, but as a “city farmer” rather than a traditional farmer.