Gara Villalba gave a talk on "Urban Green Infrastructures: Opportunities for Circularity of Resources and Resilience" in which she discussed the work done by the URBAG project, more specifically on energy-water-nutrients nexus of peri-urban agriculture using the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona as a case study.
Title: Extended use and optimization of struvite in hydroponic cultivation systems / Hydroponic systems are an attractive form of urban agriculture due to their low weight load, inert substrate conditions, and overall better control of plant nutrition and growth. However, gaining urban food sovereignty cannot be at the cost of increasing environmental impacts.
Title: Environmental and social life cycle assessment of growing media for urban rooftop farming / New environmental strategies are emerging for cities to become more self-sufficient, such as hydroponic crop production. The implementation of such systems requires materials that usually originate in countries with low labour costs and other legal regulations. To what extent could these strategies be shifting problems across the globe?