500 years of Urban Farming in Denmark
Past Experiences & Future Prospects
By Paul Rye Kledal
Head Of Research at Alpha Aqua A/S
Denmark (March 5 2021)
Why do urban farms exist parallel to highly efficient modern agriculture? In the author’s view, urban farming carries not only solutions to broken food systems. It also supports future visions of new municipal planning approaches with architectural designs reinforcing more social balanced communities and climate resilient cities, when centred around sustainable food provision. The book documents that these visions for the future are not new. On the contrary, urban farming is sustained by a long historical legacy of creating sociable urban communities that strives to balance work and leisure, encompassing architecture and land-use with a cornucopia of healthy and abundant food.
In line with this, the book introduces one of the first microeconomic theories explaining the ‘Nature of the Urban Farm’. The theory explains among others why people enter or exit urban farming through times, as well as why you can see a simultaneous growth in urban farming in both developing and affluent countries.Formally the book is divided in two parts. The first part details the historical development of urban farming in Denmark since the Protestant Reformation in 1536 to the present. The second part draws upon the historical legacy of urban farming and looks into its future prospect on modern city planning in general. Each chapter of the historical part formally introduces an important moment in the Danish urban farm legacy contextualised within the influence of contemporary grand European transformations in politics, economics, religion, class structure and culture.
For practitioners in the urban farm movement or engaged civil servants in urban city planning, the book provides, together with design visions, also internationally recognised tools and concepts for promoting and incorporating urban farming in modern-day municipal planning. The book ends with an urban farm manifesto for the 21st century containing a vision, mission and means to promote urban farming successfully future urban development plans.
