Developing Urban Agriculture Activities and Its Importance in the New Age

Today, the world is faced with main problems like increasing urban population, increasing demand for food, environmental degradation and destruction of natural landscapes due to human impacts. The solution of these problems lies in the cities. The urban agriculture as a part of urban activities can be developed along with ecosystem consideration, food provision and cultural services. In addition, farming activities in urban areas provide other multiple functions such as visual amenity, recreation facilities and hobby for urban dwellers, particularly children and old people. The purpose of this study is to explain the concept of urban agriculture and identifying its advantages and areas. This research has been conducted through a review of literature and documents. The results showed that urban agriculture is expanding and has a lot of quantitative and qualitative advantages for urban communities and these advantages can be found in economic, social and environmental dimensions that finally leading to sustainable urban development. Also, the studies show that the scope of urban agriculture continues to expand according to the new lifestyles, high compactness of cities and development of living in apartment, the domain of urban agriculture activities are developing and they appears in the new forms like vertical farms, green roofs, green walls. Factors such as further research, people participation, government supports and cooperation between experts of different sciences lead to systemic development of urban agriculture.