Abstract
With the overall aim to design successful implementation strategies of food-energy-water production systems on urban roofs, we propose an integrated process that includes participatory processes and a multi-dimensional sustainability assessment of environmental, social and economic indicators. The proposed framework was applied to a typical housing estate in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona made up of 201 buildings and 13,466 inhabitants and characterized by a high share of low-income families. We assess several future scenarios of joint electricity production (photovoltaic panels), vegetable production (through open-air farming and greenhouses), green roof implementation and rainwater harvesting and rank them according to non-participatory and participatory approaches. In general, there was a tendency for residents to choose strategies providing energy and water rather than the food production potential of rooftops. However, the environmental assessment indicated that the least impacting alternatives from a life cycle approach were those promoting vegetable production, meeting 42 to 56% of the residents’ fresh produce demand and reducing environmental impacts by 24 to 37 kg CO2eq m−2 of rooftop/year. Hence, we found that residents were mainly concerned with energy expenses and not so much with food insecurity, social cohesion or the impacts of long-distance supply chains. Our assessment supports urban sustainability and helps identify and breach the gap between scientific and user preferences in urban environmental proposals by informing and educating residents through a participatory integrated assessment.
Highlights
Cities are implementing a range of climate action programmes to develop resilient and environmentally, socially and economically healthy communities in response to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) ‘sustainable cities and communities’ (Rosenzweig et al 2010, United Nations 2020)
With the overall aim to design successful implementation strategies of food-energy-water production systems on urban roofs, we propose an integrated process that includes participatory processes and a multi-dimensional sustainability assessment of environmental, social and economic indicators
Related to the implementation of these new systems on their roofs, i.e., food and energy production and rainwater harvesting, the neighbours predominantly selected energy production, electricity, due to the high price of this resource, which ranges between 50–80 €/family/month, and water and vegetables, despite spending an average of 60–80 €/family/month (Toboso-Chavero et al 2020)
Summary
Cities are implementing a range of climate action programmes to develop resilient and environmentally, socially and economically healthy communities in response to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) ‘sustainable cities and communities’ (Rosenzweig et al 2010, United Nations 2020). An emergent strategy for procuring FEW in cities with limited land availability that covers these premises is the use of rooftops to grow vegetables, produce energy or harvest rainwater, termed the roof mosaic. We conducted an initial study that analysed the environmental impacts of this strategy’s adoption (Toboso-Chavero et al 2019) and a second study screened a municipality’s metabolic pattern to detect hotspots in FEW resource consumption (Toboso-Chavero et al 2021). To implement this strategy effectively in complex systems such as cities, a more comprehensive and participatory framework has to be established (Kloepffer 2008)
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