Determining the levels of urban agriculture to meet the desired goals of urban development

Abstract

ABSTRACT Urban agriculture is essential to support sustainable urban development by achieving the urban agriculture goals (UAGs), which are economic, environmental, social, agricultural, esthetic and humanitarian goals. Urban agriculture includes three main levels, starting with precision urban agriculture, followed by the level of small urban agriculture, and then gradually moving to medium and large urban agriculture. These different levels are tightly connected to what UAGs aims to achievement. The research aims to providing a framework for selecting the appropriate level of urban agriculture according to the urban agriculture required goals, through finding the interrelationship between urban agriculture levels (UALs) and the related urban agriculture goals (UAGs) for each level. The research depends on experts’ questionnaires to conclude the varying relationships of the impacts of urban agriculture levels which are micro, small, and medium levels on the urban agriculture goals, which have been classified into groups, according to the most and the least affected by the UALs. Where the small scale of urban agriculture levels came in the lead of supporting the achievement of the social, environmental, and urban esthetic urban agriculture goals, however the medium- to large urban agriculture level came in the lead of supporting the achievement of agricultural and economic urban agriculture goals. This result will be beneficial to decision-makers in distributions of urban agriculture in deferent levels to determine the most appropriate level of urban agriculture in cities and residential complexes, according to the desired urban agriculture goals, according to the experts’ results.