Epsilon Archive for Student Projects

Abstract

Food is a vital component to the survival of all life forms. Development of a global food system has increased food security yet produced greater environmental impacts, amplified by various threats to the global food system as well as a major use of natural resources. Since urban populations typically consume larger quantities of food with higher resource demands, the environmental support of food consumption in a “green” urban district is analyzed in this study. The purpose is to examine whether diets in Rosendal (Uppsala, Sweden) are more sustainable than the municipal average through an emergy synthesis. Architects were interviewed to determine if any explicit strategies were in place to promote sustainable food consumption in Rosendal. The results show that no strategies were in place, and food consumption in Rosendal is greater in both quantity and emergy when compared to the municipal average. Three alternative scenarios were developed to investigate whether food sourced locally, a vegetarian diet, or a locally sourced vegetarian diet could improve the sustainability of the current consumption pattern. It is found that the current diet sourced locally would produce the most sustainable and renewable scenario, yet the vegetarian options reduce overall emergy. Therefore, this study concludes that food consumption should be considered from a holistic perspective that integrates food production policies into urban planning, design and management to support growing foods locally and reductions in meat consumption.