• Include issues you have learnt this week in terms of power relations and important actors, integrating a critical political economy approach to systems thinking.

• Remember to share your work in the appropriate super challenge Padlet with your group number (climate change, food and waste).

Problem: Growing urban populations are placing pressure on rural farming areas.

Solution: Integrate urban agriculture (e.g., vertical farming, rooftop gardens) into city infrastructure. 

Benefit: Cities designed with food production in mind, reduced food miles, local jobs, community spaces & social benefits? 

Scenario/Context: By 2047, urban spaces in cities like (decide on location) have large-scale vertical farms that feed local populations. 

Q's for Consideration

• Who controls land use & water access in cities? Water pricing- is it privatized?

• Urban planning rules deciding if/where farms can be set up. Do they prioritize commercial or residential projects over green spaces?

• How do large grocery chains and global supply chains dominate food distribution?

• How local food co-ops or farmers’ markets challenge the power of large grocery chains.

• How gov/city/district policies and laws either support or restrict urban food production and distribution/ community green spaces? Do they offer supports/incentives/grants?

• Is there urban composting facilities for households that could contribute to urban gardens?

• Affordability of locally grown food vs. supermarket prices.

• Are low-income communities/households excluded from the benefits of urban agriculture due to lack of space/resources/money?

  
  

Just a draft visualisation that we can amend :)

• Government and Policy Makers (Municipal & National)

• Urban planners & developers

• Regulatory bodies

• Urban Farmers (individuals and collectives)

• Community groups & environmental groups

• NGOs related to food distribution/access/social justice/poverty

• Local waste organisations/corporations

• Urban residents, and consumers

• Schools and educational institutes

• Agricultural Co-ops, Agri supply businesses

• Local markets/ food distributors/ retail outlets

• Agri tech companies

"Decide what data you will gather and how (find a visual/written/numerical way to measure it, examples of formats: picture diary, written diary, excel sheet)."

I'm thinking the following:

Boundaries: Weekly household consumption (no restaurants?)

Process: Participants track normal grocery purchases for a week,(careful to not have bias). Then identify what portions of their weekly consumption can be considered "fresh" vs processed. Using the packaging / labelling / common sense of the fresh products, identify its origin. Can log all of this in an excel sheet and then do approximate calculations on food miles from origin -> point of consumption. This will allow us to average out all miles per individual and make really simple graphics based on individual or type of product to visualize our data. Will be interesting to see differences!