Mapping urban agriculture potentials in Nerima City, Tokyo

Viljoen presents abstracted and applied mappings forming part of the ongoing investigation, ‘Laboratories for Urban Agriculture’. Here, field work from Nerima City in Tokyo provided the raw material for a set of mappings using collage, montage, photography and drawing to communicate new readings of functional agricultural land use and to develop replicable strategies for reintegrating fragmented farmland into the city’s urban fabric. An inductive approach is applied to original primary place-based mappings made by the author to explore and describe mapping as a design research method and technique. Thematically this chapter focuses on urban food growing sites and their potential to catalyse sustainable spatial and place making innovations. Refencing collage, montage and work of early modernist artists such as Schwitters, it is argued that mapping methods drawing on these legacies can be propositional and generative, for near future scenario building that value green infrastructure, nature-based solutions, walkable neighbourhoods and wellbeing.