Urban and peri-urban agriculture is currently experiencing rapid growth. This covers a variety of forms, such as vertical farming, greenhouse rooftops, local foodsheds, which together with green spaces like parks and green roofs, are referred to as green infrastructure. It potentially makes cities more resilient to climate change and more sustainable in terms of water management, food production, air quality, human well-being and biodiversity. URBAG will examine if and how green infrastructure can be effective in contributing to sustainability in the aforementioned sense.
URBAG is funded by the Horizon 2020 European Research Council and hosted by ICTA-UAB.
This project is inspired by the pressing need to understand the effect of green infrastructures on the food-energy-water system and the urban atmosphere. Its innovative aspect is to integrate life cycle modelling that quantifies the metabolism of materials and energy associated to green infrastructures with atmospheric modelling to understand how those green infrastructures also affect the urban atmosphere. To do so, this project will implement a new approach in which land and resource use are used to drive both life cycle analysis and atmospheric modelling. Two case study cities and their metropolitan area will serve to develop this novel approach: Barcelona (Spain) and Oslo (Norway).