Abstract
The institutionalized disconnection between agricultural production and consumption, intensely ingrained in the industrialization of agrarian societies, resulted in an extensive and globalized food system. Such prioritization of agricultural land over natural ecosystems led to considerable environmental degradation and the destabilization of current production due to accelerated climate change. Today, the downfalls of this approach and the lack of land to feed the estimated future population are causing modern cities to experience the emergence of controlled environment agriculture. Given the energy-intensive artificial lighting requirements, this year-round and climate-independent agricultural system has a fundamental disadvantage for metropolitan expansion. Inspired by passive strategies where the optimization of lighting efficiency drives the planning and design of productive spaces, the research proposes and develops a process and a tool for efficient sunlight-informed urban-integrated agriculture.
The framework is developed and proposed as a cluster of data-driven computational procedures (Helianthus tool) that support the integration of miscellaneous factors related to the light efficiency of agricultural spaces, including environmental sunlight (photosynthetically active radiation), crops (species, yields), materials light transmittance and other relevant complementary variables (artificial lighting and energy savings). The thesis proposes a unique approach to optimize and accelerate urban agriculture expansion computationally and experimentally. The investigation of the aforementioned procedures contributes to innovative forms of generating, allocating, and developing three-dimensional sustainable agricultural spaces in cities. Sunlight-informed methods prevalent in urban and agricultural sciences are investigated and intertwined as a theoretical and technical basis to examine, evaluate, and standardize future urban agriculture developments with a focus on efficiency and productivity.
Consequently, the following methods were developed as enabling mechanisms for the efficient sunlight-informed urban-integrated agriculture computation: (1) the modeling of photosynthetically active radiation in the built environment; (2) the crop-centric parametric computational tool (Helianthus) that performs a detailed analysis of light-informed data to produce customized interactive visualizations; and (3) the multi-criteria analytical framework (employing Helianthus) validated in multi-scalar hierarchies (building, district, city) and evaluated based on quantitative performance (site suitability, crop suitability, yield performance, and efficiency performance). New sunlight thresholds for urban agriculture (Helizones) have been obtained to implement the approach as an urban performance indicator capable of redefining agricultural land use. Among the potential contributions, a high degree of efficiency is achieved through passive environmental suitability compared to energy-intensive conventional high-tech urban farms. Multi-scalar experimental case studies employing the proposed theoretical and technical methods are introduced and argued. The case studies demonstrate a systematic and efficient analytical evaluation that defines a new paradigm of urban agriculture thresholds for the location and selection of sustainable crop species. The experimentation demonstrates theoretical, methodological, and technological contributions to the planning and design of urban agricultural spaces. Future research is oriented toward a decentralized agricultural system that establishes synergies within complex urban networks with considerable sustainable development implications.