Ska det framtida Göteborg växa och gro?: En diskursanalys gällande beslutsfattares syn på urbant jordbruk

Abstract

An increasing global population and a worldwide growing urbanization has raised the question about the future food security in cities all over the world. Peak-oil limits the access to cheap fossil fuels which threatens the global food-supply chain. This has resulted in a larger awareness and discussion related to urban agriculture. Growing crops and keeping animals within the city-borders could be one way of creating a more robust and sustainable food supply for city dwellers. However, to enable an expansion of the urban agriculture many theorists argue that policies and institutional structures that supports and promotes city farming have to be developed. There is also a need of producing networks between public and private actors to make the urban agriculture more efficient, profitable and commonly accepted. This study aims to chart the dominating discourse among decision makers in the city of Gothenburg to investigate what possibilities the discourse offers for including urban agriculture in the economic and ecological system of the city. To analyse the discourse the study uses theories regarding resilience, the rural/urban dichotomy and different approaches of creating sustainable developement. The general conclusion is that there are differences between the written and the spoken word. Overall, the documents provide a much more progressive approach than the respondents and relates urban agriculture to both food-security and resilience. The desicionmakers however argue for a dense city-structure where modernisation and technological development are key words. In their view of the future city there is little room for an expansion of urban agriculture.