Greening by Self-organised Urban Farming: A Productive Paradigm for Urban Green Space in China

Abstract

China is currently urbanising the largest agricultural population to turn areas of cultivatable land into the urban territory. This has led to many urban issues such as dense community, lack of food security, and limited access to green spaces. Chinese urban dwellers, especially the older generations who lived in rural areas, often deal with the problems in their ways by planting flowers, fruits, and vegetables on any possible grounds within their communities. Such bottom-up, dispersive, and non-institutional activity is defined as self-organised urban farming and is a common—yet overlooked phenomenon—in Chinese cities. The study assumes that urban farming will have great social and ecological potentials if properly guided by designers and will become a new paradigm for urban greening. By investigating Beijing's self-organised urban farming activities, this chapter aims to provide regulatory recommendations and planning strategies to turn self-organised urban farming into a new urban greening paradigm that engenders more benefits. Three major questions were addressed: What is self-organised urban farming? Why can self-organised farming have the potential to be a productive greening approach? How could self-organised farming green the city by integrating it into current urban greening?