Building upon extensive research into issues of water in the city and region, existing contamination & remediation of brownfield sites, and peri-urban agriculture in the city, as well as ideas presented in the 2015 Expo, a masterplan for the large scale conversion of brownfield to intensive agriculture was drawn up, based upon the model of the Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL).
The masterplan echoes the themes of the Expo as well as the Italian-born Slow Food movement, and building upon existing proposals of the local government of Milan.
The Milan Expo 2015 was envisaged on two themes: “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”- the need to explore new means to feed an exploding global urban population. The study was conducted in the South-West area of the city, along the Naviglio Grande, and stretching southwards into the protected agricultural park of Parco Agricolo and the Parco delle Risaie.
The research analysed the urban ‘hinterland’, existing areas of productive urban agriculture, both intensive (allotments) and extensive (rice paddies), and urban brownfield, vast areas of land with potential to provide growing zones to feed the city.
The project drew inspiration from the large scale implementation of intensive, community-based urban agriculture in Habana, Cuba following the collapse of the USSR as Cuba’s chief supplier of oil and agrichemicals.
Building upon extensive research of existing contamination & remediation of brownfield sites, and peri-urban agriculture in the city, as well as ideas presented in the 2015 Expo, plans for a new ‘Continuous Productive Urban Landscape’ were drawn up.
Echoing the themes of the Expo as well as the Italian-born Slow Food movement, the masterplan creates a new ‘ecology’ that responds to the modern day issues of urban food production and distribution within the urban setting by learning from individually-successful and diverse examples from around the world.
At the heart of the masterplan, the Urban Agriculture & Community Food Centre will oversee the remediation and conversion of the land to intensive agriculture, and provide the necessary guidance and training to maximise the growing zones in an ecological way.
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