An examination of the extent to which architectural design has supported commercial urban agriculture

Abstract

The modernisation of agriculture to the state that it can have the ability to alleviate a number of low income earners out of poverty has been a vision of the government of Uganda since 2000.(Nabbumba and Bahiigwa 2003) One of the first introduced agricultural technologies included improved maize varieties, mixed cattle breeds etc. In spite of the efforts by the state to modernise agriculture from the subsistence norm to a more commercialised system, there are still issues to do with under productivity in the agricultural sector. This under productivity has continued to see many farmers, investors and the government not benefiting from the profitability of agriculture as an economic activity. This struggle in the Agricultural sector could be illuminating the need for new-fangled approaches to designing these farms to enable them maximise productivity.

This research was an examination of the extent to which Architectural design had supported the productivity of commercial urban agriculture on UWEPO farms. A more detailed background and objectives of the study are clearly stated in Chapter 1. The study sought to identify any productivity-hindering challenges in the agricultural facilities which could be solved with the aid of architectural design. Chapter 2 contains the literature review that took a panoramic view at the phenomenon of urban agriculture and analysed why urban farms were productive in the different global locations. This provided the benchmark against which the productivity of UWEPO farms was accessed. The structure of the research design is demystified in Chapter 3. The findings on the UWEPO farm in Chapter 4, however revealed very different farm models than those studied in the literature review. The reasons for these variations are discussed under Chapter 5 where the productivity of the farms is also accessed. The latter stage (Chapter 6) of this investigation was the generation of recommendations on how these commercial urban farms/agricultural facilities can be architecturally redesigned for maximisation of output.