UBC Graduate Research

Urban Food Futures Barnard, Ruby

Abstract

The Anthropocene is characterized by accelerating, unpredictable, and unprecedented human-induced change which threatens the existence of diverse societies, cultures, species, and ecologies. Underlying these issues are unsustainable socio-ecological systems which separate nature and society enabling the capitalist exploitation and degradation of both. Cities and industrial food production are key sites of these struggles as both symptoms and causes of the Anthropocene. Regenerative food and fiber systems have the potential to reconnect people to place, the web of life, and their bodies in urban novel ecosystems creating better socioecological networks in the process. The south shore line in Vancouver is currently occupied by a novel ecosystem typical of highly altered post industrial sites and transportation corridors with plentiful plant resources and habitat potential. This project proposes a regenerative food & fiber network along an existing post-industrial railway corridor in Vancouver. The comprehensive design creates landscapes and architectures that offer flexible space to encourage and support reciprocal acts of care for the landscape. Site interventions provide opportunities for local community members to plant, tend, harvest, share, and recycle food and materials, activities which contribute to the long-term ecological restoration of the site.

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Rights

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International