Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL): designing essential infrastructure

This paper reviews the role of productive landscapes within the context of the CPUL City design concept. Whilst this concept concentrates on the European urban model, it draws from international experience and its findings are scalable and adaptable to other urban models, including the Chinese. Continuous Productive Urban Landscape (CPUL) proposes a coherent strategy for the introduction of interlinked productive landscapes into cities thereby creating a new sustainable urban infrastructure and supporting a re-definition of open urban space usages. The paper focuses on urban agriculture as one of the major components of CPUL. Making reference to recent high-profile international exhibitions and publications, the paper traces urban agriculture’s remarkable shift from a fringe interest to one at the centre of contemporary urban/architectural discourse. Design studies by the authors are used to demonstrate the viability and physical manifestation of urban agriculture and productive land within a CPUL City and introduce design issues related to its spatial placing and public perception The paper concludes that, while urban agriculture is receiving a great deal of attention, the theory underpinning the design of productive landscapes and the rationale for developing policy to support its practice will require sophisticated cross-disciplinary work to articulate the full potential of concepts such as CPUL in making essential infrastructure within future sustainable cities.