19. The Spatial Planning of Agricultural Production in Beijing Toward Producing Comfortable and Beautiful Living Environment

Since 1984, Beijing’s rapid economic growth and urbanization have been heading into resource and environmental problems, such as cropland decrease, environmental deterioration, and traffic jams. Therefore, more space for glades and trees is needed to improve the urban environment. However, the central government’s decision to maintain 227,000 ha of cropland for national food security created a dilemma for Beijing: the need to choose between keeping the cropland or planting more trees and enlarging the glades. Actually, people can use the croplands to serve both purposes—food production and eco-environmental service—because croplands are multifunctional anyway. Besides food production, croplands also have ecological, landscape, cultural, and tourism roles, especially in megacities. This chapter analyzed land use and crop structure based on the land-use survey and agricultural statistic data while discussing the existing state of agriculture, including economic profit, labor cost, water resource depletion, and environmental impact. This study then proposed a four-ring agricultural pattern that radiates outward from the city center and exploits the multifunctional nature of croplands: an inner-city ring providing urban beautification with flowers and grass; a city-skirt ring with fruit trees, grain crops, and grass, from which intensive agriculture should be prohibited; a suburban plain ring for efficient, intensive agriculture; and lastly, the mountainous regions, for ecological conservation and unique agricultural products. This way, cultivation is combined with landscaping and ecological protection to give Beijing a more comfortable and beautiful living environment. The proposed spatial planning of agriculture is different from the traditional agricultural ring pattern identified by Thünen in 1826, but it inherits and develops the thought illustrated in Garden Cities of Tomorrow, a book written by Howard in 1945.