Project Investigators

Project Summary

Urban agriculture is integral part of sustainable city development, providing ecosystem services like air quality regulation, cooling, an appealing appearance and food production. Urban agriculture moved as trend into urban environments in form of vertical farming, rooftop and community gardening. Besides space, soil as cultivation substrate is scarce. Textile is light-weight and adaptive compared to other substrates and thus very suitable for soilless urban cultivation systems. The proposed project aims at the development of a re-useable textile cultivation substrate following a plant performance-based approach. In addition to plant and system specific properties, the dimensional stability of the textile will be taken into account during the development to allow for re-usability of the substrate through cleaning. Thermo-mechanical and a biological cleaning process will be developed and evaluated. Subsequently, existing urban farming systems will be technically adapted to the textile substrate to improve resource-use efficiency and include an appropriate substrate cleaning process. In combination with a market analysis and target group segmentation (community gardening; urban farming for self-sufficiency; professional indoor, greenhouse and vertical farming) the value proposition and the financial feasibility will be translated into novel business models to support the market growth of urban farming. Circular, leight-weight and resource-efficient urban farming with re-usable substrate may inspires urban inhabitants, triggers sustainable consumer behavior and leads to a societal transition towards bioeconomy.