Dissertation
The opportunities for urban food self-sufficiency through green roofs: Modeling, Optimization, and Policy Scenario Analysis
Conventional food supplies procured from rural areas are increasingly vulnerable to disruptions caused by extreme weather, geopolitical instability, and logistical bottlenecks.
- Author
- P. Xie
- Date
- 08 April 2026
- Links
- Thesis in Leiden Repository
Against this backdrop, urban agriculture, and particularly productive green roofs, has emerged as a promising strategy to enhance urban food security, optimize land use, and deliver ecosystem co-benefits. Green roofs are widely promoted as nature-based solutions, and they prioritize stormwater management, thermal insulation, or aesthetic improvements rather than food production. Further, their real-world implementation remains extremely limited. Structural load constraints, fragmented building ownership, insufficient policy incentives, uncertainties around economic performance, and the lack of long-term monitoring data further constrain their adoption. Consequently, urban decision-makers and stakeholders often lack empirical evidence to determine whether rooftop agriculture can meaningfully support urban food systems or contribute to broader sustainability goals on a large scale. Quantitative, spatially explicit assessments on the potential of rooftop agriculture are thereby necessary for large-scale investments.
The aim of this thesis is to advance our understanding on the extent to which green roofs can contribute to urban food production by modelling crop yields, evaluating rooftop suitability, and analysing trade-offs between food production and rainwater management. Furthermore, it contextualizes the role that productive green roofs can realistically contribute toward urban food security under existing spatial and environmental constraints.