Urban Agriculture: Function,Condition And Development Pattern

In order to balance the ecological issues in the process of urbanization, US, Japanand many developed countries in Europe started to develop urban agriculture. In1930,this concept was first illustrated in the article by Japanese scholar Siro Aosika.However, urban agriculture is a new topic in China and has mainly located in the moredeveloped areas like Shanghai and Shenzhen. From2004, development of modernagriculture has been given the first priority in the government act. Due to differentsituations, urban agriculture in China has several differences from other foreigncountries, not only in the orientation of the function, but also in the developmentpatterns. In the example of Changchun, this paper analyzes the urban agriculturedevelopment path in China according to the position of its utility, conditions ofdevelopment and the regional division, and further provides primary reference for theoverall development of urban agriculture in China.The function of urban agriculture in Changchun is to improve the economy,enrich the social civilization and establish a criterion for future development, which isalso the basic rule of developing urban agriculture in China. After comparing with theurban agriculture in other cities and theoretical demonstration, this paper describesnine essential conditions which are also the key reasons that restrict the furtherdevelopment of urban agriculture in China. The dataset of this paper is fromChangchun and other ten surrounding counties that represent the basic productionconditions and level of agriculture modernization. According to the Differential RentTheory of Marx, Location Theory of Johann Heinrich von Thunen and the comparativeadvantage theory, we can divide the urban agriculture in Changchun into three areas based on various functions, crop and livestock region, vegetable and flower region andtourism region. From the perspective of geographical location, these three functionalregions centralize in the urban areas and further proliferate to the rural areas. Due tothe restrictions in economics development, financial supports and market conditions,urban agriculture in Changchun has just started to evolve. Meanwhile, the limitationsin resource block the further progress. In order to eliminate the entire encumbrance andlead to the sustainable development, the paper shows several feasible policysuggestions.As a whole, urban agriculture is absolutely the consequence of urban economydevelopment and is the requirement to improve demand structure. From the analysisand the demonstration in this paper, it’s obvious that urban agriculture development inChina has sufficient inner motivation. However, how to develop the urban agricultureshould be treated differently as a result of various resource conditions. I hope myresearch will initiate the study of urban agriculture in other areas. Because of thedataset have many drawbacks and the theory in this field is not rigorous enough, theanalysis may have some limitations.