Urban Agriculture Casablanca: Home

Agriculture and Megacities go together

Welcome to the Urban Agriculture Casablanca - UAC - project homepage!

Urban Agriculture as an Integrative Factor of Climate-Optimised Urban Development, Casablanca / Morocco

Urban Agriculture Casablanca is a German-Moroccan research project of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) within the megacity research programme "Research for the Sustainable Development of Megacities of Tomorrow, Focus: Energy- and climate-efficient structures in urban growth centres".

Urban Agriculture Casablanca as a transdisciplinary research project was running for nine years, with a three-years preliminary project phase (07/2005 – 03/2008), a main project phase of five years duration (04/2008 – 03/2013) and a one-year prolongation phase (04/2013-03/2014).

UAC project publication

Urban Agriculture for Growing City Regions

Connecting Urban-Rural Spheres in Casablanca

edited by Undine Giseke

Maria Gerster-Bentaya, Frank Helten, Matthias Kraume, Dieter Scherer, Guido Spars, Fouad Amraoui, Abdelaziz Adidi, Said Berdouz, Mohamed Chlaida, Majid Mansour, Mohamed Mdafai

This book demonstrates how agriculture can play a determining role in sustainable, climate-optimised urban development. Agriculture within urban growth centres today is more than an economic or social left-over or a niche practice. It is instead a complex system that offers multiple potentials for tomorrow’s megacities. Urban open space and agriculture can be connected to productive urban landscapes – this forms new urban-rural linkages in the urban region and helps shape the city. But in order to do this, agriculture has to be seen as an integral part of the urban fabric and it has to be put on the local agenda.

Urban Agriculture for Growing City Regions takes the example of Casablanca, one of the fastest growing cities in North Africa, to investigate this approach. The creation of synergies between the urban and rural in an emerging megacity is demonstrated through pilot projects, design solutions, and multifunctional modules. These synergies assure greater resource efficiency; particularly regarding the use and reuse of water, and they strengthen regional food security and the social integration of multiple spheres. The book will have a long lasting legacy and is essential reading for researchers, planners, practitioners and policy makers who are working on urban development and urban agricultural strategies.

Here you can buy the publication at the publisher's website

Action Plan (french version)

Based on results from the workshop on the "Anchoring of Urban Agriculture in Grand Casablanca" (2011, Sept 23rd), the inter-administrative working group "Casablanca as a city model for urban agriculture" (2011, May-Sept) and the experiences from the pilot projects of the UAC project (since 2005).

Here you can download the Action Plan

Special Topos Edition on Urban Agriculture

In March 2011 the UAC project published a special issue of the topos, which presents the results of the research project on Urban Agriculture under the aspect of "Design as an integrative Factor of Research"

Here you can download the Callway publication Topos 74

Here you can order the Callway publication Topos 74

Local Action and Participation

Urban Agriculture in Urban Development: Methods of Awareness-raising and Knowledge Transfer (Casablanca, Morocco)

by Juliane Brandt, Natacha Crozet, Ahmed Chahed in

Local Action and Local Action and Participation Lessons Learned from Participatory Projects and Action Research in Future Megacities

Angela Jain, Sabine Schröder, Ulrike Schinkel (eds.)

The significance of bottom-up approaches initiated by civil society as well as the importance of the local level as the level for implementation is often overlooked when dealing with megacity developments. The main aim of this volume is to retrospectively trace participatory and local action approaches to climate change adaptation and mitigation in urban areas from seven case studies of the programme, one of them being the Urban Agriculture Casablanca project.

Here you can access the pdf of the flyer for the future megacities books

Summer School Médiouna 2014

The second edition of the Summer School on Urban Agriculture in Casablanca with the topic "Efficient urban-rural cycles"

Here you can download the Summer School Flyer

Conference Future Megacities in Action 2013

The international conference Future Megacities in Action will highlight good practice examples of energy and climate efficient urbanisation from Asia, Africa and America, set against the European background. It will feature the results of the research programme “Future Megacities” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research since 2005: technical, social and economic solutions developed by participating bilateral and trans-disciplinary research teams for and with cities. It will also present innovative approaches taken in other cities that stand out in their efforts towards achieving greater sustainability.

Here you can go to the Conference Website

Here you can download the Conference Flyer

Intnerational Conference on Urban Agriculture Casablanca ICUA-CASA 2013

In January 2013 the UAC project hosted an international conference on Urban Agriculture in Casablanca with the participation of researchers, practitioners and planners from over 30 countries worldwide.

Here you can download the event synopsis