Research Team
Co-Chairs : Luis Rodriguez(ABE), and Anna-Maria Marshall(Sociology)
Initial participants : Craig Gunderson(ACE), Daniel Work, Barbara Minsker and Bill Buttlar(CEE), Sam Wortman(Crop Sciences), Jong Lee(NCSA), Shaowen Wang(Geography), Brian Anderson(INHS), Jim Miller(NRES), Gary Miller(PRI), Bev Wilson and Bumsoo Lee(URP), and Kevin Lansey(CEEM, ASU)Grand Challenges
Addressing chronic problems that bridge urban and rural areas, such as pollution (e.g., hypoxia in regions downstream of urban areas) and water resource conflicts, while providing sufficient, safe, and affordable food and agricultural products to society.
Research Questions
(1) How can the urban food supply chain be made more efficient, from economic, social, and environmental dimensions? How can urban consumers help defray the social and environmental costs of production in agricultural areas?
(2) How can networks of urban green spaces (e.g., urban agricultural systems, rain gardens, bioswales, wetlands, and retention ponds) be redesigned to address regional water problems such as flooding, hypoxia, drought, and eutrophication?
(3) What forms of governance are best suited to resolve competing claims and conflicts about regional water resources? What are the impact of policies on these conflicts?
(4) What is the relationship between these ongoing conflicts over water resources and structural inequalities, particularly related to race and class? (5) How do community histories and cultural traditions inform policy-makers and residents in their efforts to find solutions to the above problems?