Integrated Decision-Making of Urban Agriculture within the Greyfield Regeneration Environments (UAGR)

Abstract

Various urban environmental and social challenges have emerged during the rapid urban development. Urban agriculture has emerged as one of the practical solutions to address these urban issues and climate change. This study aims to establish a decision model for urban agriculture regeneration that can be applied to improve the implementation of related projects. The study first reviews existing research on Urban Agriculture within the Greyfield Regeneration Environments (UAGR) and outlines the processes involved, including project initiation, construction, and operation management. It identifies 25 factors influencing UAGR and employs the Fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) to prioritize them based on expert judgments. Subsequently, the interpretative structural model (ISM) analysis method is applied to analyze the interrelationships among the 11 most important factors. Matrix operations and MATLAB programming are utilized to establish the influence relationship model based on expert questionnaires to determine the influence between each pair of factors. This results in a hierarchically structured decision model for UAGR. Finally, the decision-making model is applied to analyze the case study in Shanghai and Hangzhou. As urban agricultural activities are proliferating in rapid urbanization, the establishment of a decision-making model for UAGR can offer practical guidance to practitioners, facilitating the development of urban agriculture and mitigating climate change.