Description
Agropolitan is a term created by John Friedmann (1979). An Agropolis – essentially an agricultural city - can be defined as a city in which agriculture is an intrinsic part of its autonomy and its development, influencing its urban design and providing the main source of food for its residents. Over the past decade the idea of the Agropolis has found new resonance in the context of concerns over food security, and the lack of preparedness for climate change or catastrophe. These concerns are inherently linked to increasing urbanisation, or rather, the specific nature of that urbanisation.
Various blueprints for an Agropolis have been proffered, as typified by the case studies within Luc Mougeot’s Agropolis (2010). Similarly, a vast array of activities that can be called agri-urban have developed across the globe. (See Caroline Brand’s Designing Urban Food Policies, 2019). Such projects vary from underground micro-greens growing, to city farms, to vertical production on high-rise blocks. Consequently, each different type of project comes with its own rationale, aims, and ethos (see World Bank report, 2013).
This paper attempts to analyse such initiatives and blueprints, tease out the strands in common, and come up with the beginnings of a common imagination for the Agropolis so that agri-urban activities can build towards climate-resilience. However, this is not only an exercise in imagining a new type of city. The United Nations is keen to support the creation of ‘resilience hubs’, which would work together in areas including food security. So, the Agropolis is a vision for international political cooperation as much as it is one for the operating of a city.
Blueprints are, arguably, always political, and those of the Agropolis are no exception. They offer new ways of imagining cities as entities in and of themselves, but also as parts of global networks of resilience in the face of climate change and potential climate disaster. In providing alternative political imaginations, this paper openly challenges existing theories of development that rely on industrialisation, (conventional) urbanisation, and classic economic growth. In doing so it takes a ‘post-development’ stance, seeking to challenge ideas about what ‘developed’ looks like, as informed by Western ideals of modernization which are presented as the universal model for others to emulate.
References
• Brand, Caroline (2019) Designing Food Policies: Concepts and Approaches. New York: Cham Springer Nature
• Friedmann, John (1979) ‘Basic needs, agropolitan development, and planning from below’, in World Development, vol. 7 (6), pp.607-613
• Mougeot, Luc (2010) Agropolis: The Social, Political and Environmental Dimensions of Urban Agriculture. London: Routledge
• World bank report (2013) ‘Urban Agriculture’, part of the Urban Development Series. Available online: World Bank Document
