Kishimoto, Keidai and Yan, Wanglin (2021) Performance of Urban Agriculture in Tokyo: a Geospatial Perspective of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus. CITIES 20.50 – Creating Habitats for the 3rd Millennium: Smart – Sustainable – Climate Neutral. Proceedings of REAL CORP 2021, 26th International Conference on Urban Development, Regional Planning and Information Society. pp. 577-586. ISSN 2521-3938
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Text (Performance of Urban Agriculture in Tokyo: a Geospatial Perspective of the Food-Water-Energy Nexus)
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Abstract
Urban agriculture plays a role in modern food systems to reduce transportation energy, improve local production for local consumption, and so on. However, the demand for local food, the supply of farmland, and even the attitudes of farmers may vary with the process of urbanization as well as the urban structure of cities. This is significant particularly in Asian megacities such as Tokyo, where the built-up areas have mostly spread to suburbs along rail lines and expanded outward from train stations on topographic and historical fundamentals. Furthermore, urban agriculture in Tokyo is facing strong pressure from urban development, the aging of farmers, and depopulation. Few previous studies have discussed the performance of urban agriculture in a megalopolis like Tokyo based on detailed evidence. The aim of this study was to clarify the relationship of food, water and energy in Tokyo through input-output analysis ofresource use and vegetable production. We created a database of water and energy resource inputsfor greenhouses, fertilizers, and pesticides, etc., for farming and vegetable production. We quantitatively calculated the input-output efficiency of energy and water resources per unit of food production in the Tokyo metropolitan area and visualized regional characteristics by hierarchical cluster analysis. We found that Tokyo produced 75,566t of vegetables per year, or an average of about 5.5kg per capita for its 13.8 million population, with 426.1TJ of energy consumed,especially in greenhouses and manufacturing compost, and 8.7 ML of water, especially in manufacturing phosphorus fertilizer. With cluster analysis identified four types of urban agriculture in terms of environmental load: “lowenvironmental load,”“medium environmentalload,”“highwaterload,” and “highenergyload.” In summary, the closer to the CBD, the more intensive the agriculture type in the sense of environmentally burden, due to the impacts of urbanization; the central part of the Tama area, with more open space for agriculture, shows moderate consumption of energy and water; and the farmlands in western Tama far from the CBD are less intensive and often cultivated with low environmental load. These findings suggest that the conservation and promotion of urban agriculture in Tokyo should consider geospatial characteristics. As land prices rise, could become more intensive, meanwhile, with a possible transition from “low environmentalload” to “mediumenvironmental load” and from “mediumenvironmental load” to “high water load” or “high energy load” to environment. This is a challenge for urban policymakers to manage the synergistic effects and conflicts in agriculture-inclusive urban development.
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Additional Information: | The authors would like to thank Tokyo Metropolitan Government for providing GIS datasets. This work was supported by the Tokyu Foundation in 2020-2021 (Grant no. 2020-219),the Keio University Doctorate Student Grant-in-Aid Program from Ushioda Memorial Fund in 2021, and the Belmont ForumSUGI NEXUS/M-NEX project (Grant no. 11314551). |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Urban structure, environmental load,input-output efficiency,hierarchical cluster analysis |
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor S Agriculture > S Agriculture (General) |
| Depositing User: | REAL CORP Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 30 Sep 2021 07:28 |
| Last Modified: | 17 Oct 2021 17:39 |
| URI: | http://repository.corp.at/id/eprint/787 |
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