Socio-environmental functions of urban farming in compact cities : the case of Hong Kong

Abstract

The agriculture in Hong Kong shrinks as Hong Kong evolves towards a predominantly urbanized and service-oriented economy and mostly relies on imports for food supply. Also, many people think that urban and rural developments are not compactable and rural development must give way to urbanization. Is urban farming valueless and no longer important for Hong Kong? According to the research done by World Wide Fund and Global Footprint Network in 2014, Hong Kong people require 3.1 Earths for maintaining our current lifestyles and meeting their needs. Meanwhile, we started experiencing some kind of abnormal climate even in the city such as abnormally high winter precipitation and temperature, some deciduous trees such as Bombax malabaricum with leaves remain during winter, etc. Therefore, we need to change our current lifestyle so that we can reduce our carbon emission, conserve our precious natural resources, protect our mother nature and adapt to the changing climate and weather. In this paper, socio-environmental functions of urban farming were revealed through questionnaires, in-depth observation on urban farms and interviews with different stakeholders. Generally speaking, public agreed the beneficial social and environmental functions provided by urban farming, especially on increasing the green spaces in the city and improving the parent-child relationships through participating in urban farming activities. Therefore, public agreed that urban farming should be further promoted throughout our communities such as in schools, elderly centers and community centers. Urban farming has high potential of being further developed in Hong Kong, therefore, recommendations were given on (i) policy level, such as develop holistic agricultural policies, greening and food production policies as well as educational policy; (ii) urban planning level, such as protection of the agricultural land and greening spaces, make use of underutilized rooftops, vertical wall and residential podium gardens as well as recognition of the productive farms for calculating green coverage; (iii) city management level and (iv) public participation in designing and planning and implementing the urban farming as well as community-supported agriculture.