Feasability Assessment of Urban Agriculture in Rooftop Greenhouses. the Case Study of Social Neighborhood in Quito, Ecuador
- Authors
- Rodr?guez Cadena, Daniel
- Format
- MasterThesis
- Status
- publishedVersion
- Description
This project began with a series of meetings held by the research group (student and supervisors), in which the general features and aspects of the subject, research and study area were defined. Guidelines to assess the implementation of rooftop greenhouses (RTGs) were used to adapt a model that could be applied in social neighborhoods in Latin-American cities. This region was selected because its many growing cities experiencing vertical growth. The specific location was then chosen on the basis of data that had been gathered to determine which area would be representative of growing and dense urban configuration and notable urban agriculture (UA) experiences. After this phase, Quito was selected because it has experience in UA, which includes commercialization and support from the local government and Non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Following this stage, a social neighborhood was selected with characteristics of both a compact city and peri-urban area, to be representative of Quito and other Latin American cities. Also, it were considered social features that endorse the feasibility of RTGs implementation, like rural-urban migrant population and regulations that would allow a faster implementation process. Data was then gathered from governmental sources, to obtain further information about the study area, and to review pertinent features. Nonetheless this data was not found or was incomplete, requiring a further invvestigation from alternative sources as NGOs, universities or international development entities among others. For rooftop analysis an orthophoto (1:5000) was obtained from an Agriculture Ministry project (SIGTIERRAS) and satellite pictures were taken from Google Earth to compare results. RTGs requirements to short term feasibility were defined as the following: plain, build using reinforced concrete, unfinished rooftops, without permanent equipment and larger than 10 m2, which were measured using GIS. Other rooftops were considered as medium and long term feasible and were counted also in GIS. In order to estimate the potential of RTGs in the study area, three equations were selected, to determine potential production, self-sufficiency and self-supply, the first and the second taken from the mentioned base guidelines and the third developed for this research. Then, they were applied with two chosen vegetables that are consumed in the study area (tomatoes and lettuce). The results showed that 33,2 % of rooftops are feasible in short-term with an area of 7.69 ha (roughly 12 % of the study area). While the study area represents only 0,17% of Quito's urban area, up to 18 % of the tomato demand and up to 9 % of the lettuce demand of the urban population of Quito could be supplied with RTGs implementation. As can be concluded a small portion of the available area would supply the neighborhood with tomato and lettuce, and even other vegetables demanded could be cropped to work towards food security in the study area and in Quito. Aditional benefits would be obtained trhough the RTGs implementation, such as: rainwater harvesting, enhance comunity resilience, thermal confort improvement on households and urban integration processes. The results led to the conclusion that the proposed guideline was useful to assess short-term feasible rooftops for RTGs implementation, and that adapting the guidelines could be useful in similar study areas in Latin American cities. Finally, suggestions for future research were made, focused mainly on installing RTGs in cooperation with local organizations that represent the study area, to benefit its inhabitants.
- Publication Year
- 2016
- Language
- eng
- Topic
- AGRICULTURA VERTICAL
CIUDADES SOSTENIBLES
SEGURIDAD ALIMENTARIA
AUTOABASTECIMIENTO
INVERNADEROS EN TECHO
- Repository
- Repositorio SENESCYT
- Rights
- openAccess
- License
- openAccess