Urban areas offer considerable potential for horticultural food production, but questions remain about the availability of space to expand urban horticulture and how to sustainably integrate it into the existing urban fabric. We explore this through a case study which shows that, for a UK city, the space potentially available equates to more than four times the current per capita footprint of commercial horticulture. Results indicate that there is more than enough urban land available within the city to meet the fruit and vegetable requirements of its population. Building on this case study, we also propose a generic conceptual framework that identifies key scientific, engineering and socio-economic challenges to, and opportunities for, the realization of untapped urban horticultural potential.

城市地区为园艺食品生产提供了巨大的潜力，但是仍然存在扩展城市园艺的空间以及如何将其可持续地整合到现有城市结构中的问题。我们通过一个案例研究对此进行了探索，该案例表明，对于英国城市而言，潜在可用空间相当于当前商业园艺人均足迹的四倍以上。结果表明，城市内有足够的城市土地来满足其人口的水果和蔬菜需求。在此案例研究的基础上，我们还提出了一个通用的概念框架，该框架确定了实现尚未开发的城市园艺潜力的关键科学，工程和社会经济挑战以及机遇。