EdiCitNet Global Lunch Talk #1: Integrating Edible City Solutions in Southern China – Best Practices from Guangzhou

EdiCitNet partner city, Guangzhou, has successfully embedded urban agriculture into its city landscape, and in collaboration with the EdiCitNet Project, the Guangzhou City Team has developed an Edible City Masterplan that aims to take that good work one step further. Together with other metropolitan areas located in the Pearl River Delta Economic Zone, the city of Guangzhou forms part of one of the largest metropolitan agglomerations in the world (ca. 45 million inhabitants).

Today, meeting the daily food needs of the growing population and ensuring access to safe food constitute important challenges in the city. A growing interest in increased quality of life, in the context of growing population density, particularly in central parts of the city, the loss of green spaces in the city centre, reduced levels of biodiversity and increasing exposure to heavy rainfall and typhoons, have added to a growing interest in exploring the multi-faceted benefits that urban agriculture could provide.

The Guangzhou City Team, which includes representatives from government agencies and specifically municipal community engagement teams, research institutions and a design agency, is envisioned as a policy research and planning team that aims to effectively promote Edible City Solution planning projects. Focusing on a area in the south of the city, the Guangzhou City Team is working together – and with local people on the ground – to come up with even more practical and concrete ideas for how to bring the local population closer to the food they eat and make the city greener, more sustainable and more edible. In this webinar, they tell us more about their proposals.ed