Multifunctional urban landscapes - designing edible landscapes for people and planet
A self-sufficient city? Many people were sceptical when we started designing and creating edible landscapes that build relationships between people and wildlife. But a few private homes and a "food park" later perceptions shifted, and obstacles became possibilities! It's possible to create multifunctional urban landscapes that reframe cities. Abundance - of wildlife and food - is just a shift in perception away. All we need is to help nature tell its own story, and the shift will follow!
Local
Sweden
Uppsala Kommun
Akademiska Hus
Mainly urban
It refers to a physical transformation of the built environment (hard investment)
No
No
As individual(s) in partnership with organisation(s)
First name: Max Last name: Whitman Gender: Male Please describe the type of organization(s) you work in partnership with: Ultuna Permakultur is an organisation I founded that works on models for urban self-sufficiency. We design and run edible landscapes but also host spaces for learning about soil, farming, ecology and permaculture. We see our approach to sustainability as a holistic one. That means we try and address the full spectrum of sustainability. Ultuna Permakultur, therefore, produces and sells food locally but also donates food to homeless people. We regularly organize gatherings where people can meet, work in our gardens and discuss. These spaces have proved to be very powerful as new relationships begin to form, relationships to the soil that feeds us all but also relationships to other humans. The concepts we have developed have also been spread across Sweden, with people following our model when designing edible ecosystems in their gardens but also when designing publically edible landscapes. The organisation is run by students and mainly operates in the city of Uppsala. Age: 27 Please attach a copy of your national ID/residence card:
By ticking this box, I certify that the information regarding my age is factually correct. : Yes Nationality: Sweden Address (country of permanent residence for individuals or address of the organisation)<br/>Street and number: Sara lidmans gata 2 Town: Stockholm Postal code: 11215 Country: Sweden Direct Tel:+46 73 509 56 57 E-mail:mexxi10@gmail.com Website:https://www.ultunapermakultur.com/
In general, our western culture has created sharp boundaries between concepts: nature-human, urban-rural, and production-nature. In our work designing multifunctional urban landscapes, we have always tried to dissolve these boundaries. We design environments that are highly productive using local resources but that, at the same time, promote an array of ecosystem services and social values. For the past three years, these ambitions have manifested in a model for urban food production on public lands and several models for food production in suburban areas. Our work with urban self-sufficiency on nature's premises in suburban areas has exploded in interest. Within one year of working with these models, we have had well over 50 requests to design these landscapes. We have spoken about it on prime-hour radio, had several stories in newspapers and on tv and have started working on a book together with a publisher. We call the concept "Goda hem", which is a play on the concept of "the good life" and the historical land movements that created many Swedish suburbs in the early 1900s, often with the aim of farming their land.
Our model created for public lands has likewise generated plenty of interest and served as an inspiration for similar initiatives across Sweden. In the next step of our work, we ambition to scale this work up by partnering up with Uppsala municipality to create an urban farm and a learning space. The environment is meant to invite people to engage and experience farming in a regenerative way. We ambition to have programs that educate the local population concerning (soil) ecology, food security and regenerative agriculture. This will manifest through a physical environment that will produce fruit and vegetables to 1000 families every week during prime season. But it will also manifest through various forms of education programs that can support transitions toward multifunctional urban landscapes.
Regenerative agriculture
Human-soil relationships
Resilience
Self-sufficiency
Education
The key ambition is to increase the production of nutritious food in cities while supporting wildlife to thrive. We want to create a living-learning environment where people can be inspired and empowered to create edible multifunctional urban landscapes wherever they may live. That includes private and public spaces. This is fundamental for sustainability as the models and concepts we work with will empower people with knowledge of regenerative agriculture and ecology, which is needed to transform our agriculture and consumption patterns to match the present and future needs. In addition, the project addresses social aspects of sustainability by providing spaces where people can meet to the sound of birds and the smell of flowers close to the centre of Sweden's fourth largest city. Producing food locally in a regenerative way also has a significant benefit to the climate as we contribute to creating an infrastructure that can thrive without transportation, refrigeration etc. In addition, regenerative agriculture also supports carbon sequestration.
Currently, biodiversity in cities is very limited. Walking through many cities, you are met by concrete and the smell of diesel. Our ambition is to transform lawns across the city into productive ecosystems. Instead of lifeless places that remain largely unused, our work creates spaces where life blossoms from early spring to late fall. Where you can bring a book and read it under an apple tree to the sound of bees and birds. We are inspired by the patterns of nature and envision a much wilder city that simultaneously supports human needs (physical and social). To us, introducing a bit of wilderness in terms of trees, bushes and flowers will make the city a much healthier and more beautiful environment and also help us reconnect urban citizens with the beautiful biological processes found in the more-than-human world.
The spaces we design are open for everybody to enjoy. You can stroll through our "gardens" at any times and interact with the life that is hosted in these spaces for free. In terms of combatting the growing human-nature divide, I see the opportunity for urban people to have access to these places as essential! While strolling through our landscapes will be free, our courses will be charged. However, we will also continue with the spirit of hosting "work spaces" and events where people of all ages can come to meet, laugh and be inspired together. These events is something we have hosted in the last three years and will continue to do as a way of building relationships and combating loneliness.
Behind our concept are over 300 volunteers who have spent time creating our model environments and inspiring ideas for new concepts. Our efforts are very much built on collective intelligence. While we have and continue to benefit from an array of wonderful people, the fact we host these spaces is something that is extremely appreciated. Pensioners get to meet students. University teachers get to host classes in an environment that is radically different from the classroom. People who need inspiration in their work can come and sit amongst the trees and be inspired by the wildlife and the beauty of these environments. It is hard to describe and quantify all these values as they stretch beyond our perception, but we have been told it is profound, and in scaling up the work, it can become accessible to even more people. As we scale up the models, inclusion will continue to be a leading word, both to anchor the project with locals but also to continue building relationship between people and between people and the more-than-human.
In initiating the project, we worked closely with students but also with Akademiska Hus (company) owning the land. They supported the initial work financially and together, we hosted open workshops to see what the "city" wanted from a space like this. Our collaboration with Akademiska Hus enabled rapid development and also meant we could spread the concept across networks that work on landscape design and planning. Being proactive in our communication has also helped us gain media attention which has supported the growth of our concepts.
In scaling up our ambitions we are working closely with the municipality of Uppsala who help with investments and networks.
We had landscape architects, agronomists, economists, and environmental scientists on board in the development of these concepts. While most concepts have been developed by myself and my brother me, the other expertise has been essential in communicating our work. The diversity of competence has been especially useful in our communication efforts.
While we have hosted the space, we have met a lot of people with many backgrounds and relied on being further inspired by the stories people carried. The "wildness" of our collaboration is really something I believe has been an important foundation for the creative expressions that have manifested themselves.
The innovation is in the combination of ideas that exist in the world and the application of them in our particular context. We have brought together ideas of learning labs and learning environments with rewilding, regenerative agriculture/permaculture, self-sufficiency and community development etc. These ideas have come together in a manifestation that, if scaled, can create cities that are self-sufficient in fruit, vegetables and more while allowing nature to flourish within our cities. Because we depart from holistic thinking, the benefits are hard to put into a sentence. They stretch from social and educational benefits to ecological ones, building a resilient city - reconnected to the biological processes that underpin life.
In the next stages, we wish to share our models of multifunctional urban landscapes. While the landscapes themselves will manifest differently depending on climate and culture, the perception, design process and implementation can be taught and spread worldwide. We are already seeing the growth of private self-sufficient ecosystems and public ones based on our models. Our ambition is to scale up our time and ability to empower people to create the future city wherever they may be. The ability to do so is something we hope to share.
Food security, biodiversity, soil erosion, climate mitigation and adaptation are all major challenges that the scaling of our models address. They don't solve them (nothing alone will) but the models allows care to be expressed where people live and that ultimately is what all of us working on sustainability are trying to promote. An ethic of care and an intuition to carry it out. If we can contribute to that we are surely moving in the right direction.
