Małgorzata Drożdż-Szczybura

Cities have never completely gave up rusticity. From the antiquity, villages and rural areas have been performing recreational functions for urban residents. They have been treating traditional tasks carried out in farmhouses as a hobby, in which they involve in their free time. Various forms of recreation in cities or these executed by their inhabitants are rooted in the rural rites and customs. Urban gardening is a rustic form of recreation in the city. Allotment gardens, backyards, communal gardens, farms for children, edible parks and food forests, grown according to the principles of permaculture, located within cities. The „rural” leisure of city dwellers is also achieved by equestrian centres, horse riding tracks and hotels for horses, increasingly localized in the urban development. The rustic recreation often allows for the integration of urban population through the large involvement of local communities and non-profit business in the form of a public-private partnership.

Cities are developing extremely rapidly, and they already use 75% of the Earth’s resources. Their area is increasing at a slower rate than the population density, which means that an increasingly smaller area is inhabited by an increasingly growing number of people who do not produce but need food. In response to the potential crisis situations and the necessity of ensur- ing food safety to the inhabitants, some of the largest metropolitan areas of the world are developing food strategies that take into consideration food production in the city. A lot of countries are implementing solutions that enable putting into effect the idea of energetic and food self-sufficiency of cities. Vertical city farms are being established. Also, theoretical designs of self-sufficient smart cities are being developed to meet the conditions defined by the modern-day vertical farms. They as- sume the form of compact structures, single farms: smart eco-cities and smart eco-cities made up of several vertical farms.

The cultivation systems used in some of the existing urban vertical farms utilize exclusively or mostly natural light. There are technologies based on the use of both natural and artificial light, and ones without access to sunlight, using only artificial light sources for the plant growth. The technologies used here include LED lamps, compact fluorescent lamps, metal halide lamps and fluorescent bulbs. Studies are conducted on the effects that different colors of light from LED lamps have on the quality and growth rate of plants. Their results allow us to conclude that certain crop growing systems utilizing lighting from LED lamps in urban vertical farms provide yields several times greater than in traditional farm with a comparable cultivation area. One phenomenon accompanying the use of artificial light is the possible occurrence of the light pollution effect.

Economic and environmental conditions, changing with unprecedented speed, entail looking for new agricultural technologies. The increasing human population makes it necessary to think of new methods of food production. Until now, several-dozen-storey vertical farms, open and closed, and intended mainly for urban areas and urban agriculture, belong mostly in the sphere of futuristic ideas. The projected structures are complexes of unprecedented architectural forms, self-sufficient in energy, making use of sustainable energy sources, recycling water and/or other materials. The question must be raised as to whether our civilisation on Earth can survive and develop in the coming decades without implementing visionary (for the time being) conceptions of food production? Agriculture in high-rise buildings is the dream of some scientists and architects around the globe and is becoming a reality.

Greenery in the traditional croft, as in any other environment, served three basic groups of functions, i.e. protective and technical, utilitarian as well as social and cultural. It did serve but since the late 20th century we have been observing the decline of croft as a spatial solution characterising the rural development and thus the decline of the specific functions of its accompanying greenery. Due to its utilitarian, isolating, regulating and biological properties, greenery in the croft has a considerable effect on people’s and animals’ living conditions. It primarily served the utilitarian function, which included production and protection. One must not, however, fail to take into consideration its social and cultural role, above all ornamental but also symbolic. The individual features of plants utilised at crofts found appropriate application in the right place, function and role. They had a specific symbolic meaning, which usually stemmed from rational sources and which is more or less consciously perceived even today.

The economic and environmental conditions, which change at an unparalleled pace, bring about a search for new agricultural technologies. The increasing human population needs new methods of food production. For the time being, open and closed multistorey vertical farms meant for urban areas, making one of the elements of urban agriculture, lie mostly in the realm of futuristic ideas. Designed objects present unprecedented architectonic forms. They are energy self-sufficient, use renewable energy sources, recycle water and other materials. We must ask the following question: Is the existence and development of the earth’s civilization possible in the decades to come without the implementation of the (so far) visionary concepts of food production? Agriculture in tall buildings located in the city is the measure of the dreams of scientists and architects all over the world. Nowadays, it is becoming reality.