UD-02 · 03 Urban Design
Continuous productive urban landscapes
A connected ribbon of growing space through a city — not leftover planters, but a walkable, edible open-space system.
Origin
Bohn & Viljoen, Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes
Materials
- A map of leftover land, verges, roofs and yards that already almost touch
- A shared crop plan so adjoining plots are not random
- Paths that a person can walk without leaving the productive ground
Method
- 01
Draw the existing green fragments. The work is to join them, not to invent a park on a brownfield you do not hold.
- 02
Treat each fragment as a field with a job: orchard, herb, grain, water, play. Monoculture corridors fail as badly as empty lawn.
- 03
Keep a path along the whole length so the landscape is used daily, not only harvested.
- 04
Write a care rota with the people who already live on the edges. An unowned corridor is a dumping ground within a season.
- 05
Publish a simple harvest rule: what is civic, what is a household plot, what is left for wildlife.
What this makes possible
- Food inside walking distance of kitchens
- A cooling, draining open-space network
- A city that reads as a farm at the scale of a stroll
This is a field record, not a permit. Adapt to local law, climate and skill. If you have run this method, send what you learned.