How Urban Agriculture is Reshaping Peri-Urban Beijing?

Abstract

In Beijing, urban agriculture (UA) experienced a corkscrew development with its role changing in decades: It has evolved from the purely production mode to multi-functional urban agriculture, fulfilling both social and ecological demands. At present, the practice of UA as well as the number of rural to urban migrants is growing rapidly in peri-urban Beijing. Through Multi-stakeholder Process for Action planning and Policy Design (MPAP) methodology and four in-depth case studies, we can see that UA activities are playing very important roles in reshaping peri-urban Beijing. Socially, UA induces the emergence of new migrant communities. While migrants rebuild their social network, they are changed by the city as well, which has also changed the local community. The new comers are on their way to creating a new balance. Physically, urban and peri-urban farmland limits urban sprawl, supplies agricultural products for everyday life, and reserves urban green spaces for recreation and leisure for citizens in Beijing, which has changed the landscape and land use and land cover (LUCC) pattern greatly. Under Beijing's land policy, the concentric configuration spatial allocation through multi-functional UA is formed, which at the same time due to migrants' UA activities are creating harmful and low efficient land use pattern which should be of concern.