Author(s)

L M van den Berg

Abstract

Due to severe competition for urban space from economically and politically much stronger functions, agricultural production is not considered sustainable in urban areas. Nevertheless, it is found all over the world and plays many different roles, including the supply of fresh food and flowers, a meaningful way of spending leisure time and supplementary income for many of the urban poor in third-world cities. Other roles are the management of green space or temporarily vacant land in cities at very low cost to the local authorities, and the recycling of organic waste. Drawing from a number of case studies in Africa and SE Asia, the present paper shows how difficult it is to play such valuable roles in the face of both imagined and real problems of public health or environmental degradation. At the same time, these urban agricultural producers may have to depend on polluted streams for irrigation, they may cause soil erosion by inappropriate farming techniques, or they may poison surrounding urban residents through the pesticides they apply. The paper describes how these synergies and conflicts result in a form of land use that could be much more beneficial to the urban system if it were treated by town planners and administrators as a normal urban function in need of both regulation and protection. 1 Introduction Cities are not sustainable without agricultural production. Most urban residents and administrators alike take it for granted that such production

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