Research approach
The project pursues an open, process-oriented research approach subjected to follow-up adjustments. This means that new insights and the ones generated from the research process can be applied to monitor and more precisely define the research questions, and that feedbacks occur.
A refinement of the initial hypothesis was already undertaken in the preliminary phase of the project. Contrary to the original assumptions, informal and subsistence-related practices of Urban Agriculture played only a minor role in Casablanca, leading to the research aspects concerning informal practices being withdrawn in favour of a more planning-orientated approach. This placed more emphasis on an area-related approach, concentrating on the tremendous transformation processes in today’s peri-urban area of the urban region.
The four central questions that were formulated to steer the research in the second stage were:
- To what extent can Urban Agriculture play a significant role in adapting to the consequences of climate change, in climate protection, and in energy efficiency, which represent amongst Morocco’s greatest economic and ecological challenges?
- To what extent is Urban Agriculture an innovative strategy for the sustainable land conservation of urban open space?
- To what extent can Urban Agriculture contribute to the struggle against poverty?
- How can Urban Agriculture be integrated as a vital element of urban development in accordance with local conditions?
- Figure: Project rhombus
Four topic areas
Four topic areas were defined for the organisation of the working process that were to be studied in-depth, within each of which subsidiary questions were to be examined. They are:
- urban development
- agriculture
- climate change
- governance and technical support
Through the so-called project rhombus, the four topic areas are placed in relation to each other. The project rhombus simultaneously serves as a tool to generate “integrated objects” such as common visions, scenarios and guidelines.
Research approach
The subsidiary research approaches follow different routes, partially explained by the methodological approaches of the participating research disciplines.
- The “normative research orientation” examines the mechanisms of the urban system itself, for example system-internal spatial production, and in its results proposes regulatory strategies aimed not at the individual actors and subsidiary topic areas, but at the overall system. With the conceptualisation of Urban Agriculture and the design of spatial models it performs settings within the investigative framework.
- The “descriptive, empirical research orientation” examines the status quo and the scope for optimisation in the areas of the project rhombus that interact within the topic area of Urban Agriculture. As a result, basic on-topic data is obtained, as well as strategies for optimation, adaptation and learning.
- The “applied research orientation” develops solution approaches for specific, topic-related interface management and technical support that is tailored to the specific topic areas. Using action research, it examines the overall approach of the project by means of an early implementation of solution approaches.
- Figure: spiral-formed work approach
The various methodological approaches are interrelated and generate wider, adapted and more precise research questions and theses from the research process, as well as interrelated research results. Due to the considerable complexity and dynamic of urban development processes, these steps do not run consecutively to one-another but rather parallel and in feedback. By this means they combine bottom-up and top-down processes with each other.
The three most important methodological tools for the overall project are:
- The spiral-formed work approach
- The integration of the subsidiary results using the project rhombus
- The action-research approach via the pilot projects
