Sustainable urban food planning: Optimizing land-use allocation and transportation in urban-rural ecosystems

Over recent years, faster urbanization and natural resources depletion have compelled an increasing attention to environmental conservation and the careful management of soil and land use. Sustainable Land-Use Planning (LUP) is the activity of allocating resources and uses to specific sites and areas, with different purposes that depend on the decision maker. Examples of these include maximizing crop yields or the profits of landowners and minimizing environmental impacts such as water consumption or greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions. Several environmental drivers and stressors can be considered in LUP, but one of the goals of environmental conservation is undoubtedly the reduction of carbon emissions. Considering the rapid growth of cities, which centralize resources, population, and consumers and thereby contribute to climate change, sustainable LUP planning of integrated urban and rural ecosystem can be the key to addressing such environmental and social issues. This chapter builds on the well-known LUP problem by investigating the relationship between transportation of people, i.e., mobility, and of food resources within a closed urban-rural ecosystem, and by determining how this affects the overall carbon emissions. The proposed LUP approach is based on a model that integrates agricultural properties such as soil features and crop yields, with the renewable energy potential of the area and the urban needs of accessibility and density. The discussed mix integer linear programming (MILP) model is implemented into a planning-support tool aimed at studying the optimal allocation of land uses in an urban-rural ecosystem with the goal of minimizing the carbon emissions. The model takes into account a closed ecosystem where agriculture, energy production, and residential areas satisfy different internal demands and needs. Some results obtained by the application of this tool are illustrated and discussed, showing the potential of the proposed approach in supporting the planning of low-carbon urban-rural ecosystems.