I'm in favor of it, even if it will never replace industrialized farming. But, what does urban mean? This is a vexing question that keeps popping up in any discussion of demographic trends and architecture. This location is very clearly urban and the intensive nature of these planting beds implies that a lot of thought and planning went into it. If urban agriculture is defined as rooftop gardens or tomato plants on windowsills, what about Michelle Obama's backyard garden? What about my feeble efforts at a vegetable garden (what is the beast that ate my eggplants? Kill, kill, kill, kill...) Sorry, I got carried away there.
Agriculture is no different from architecture in terms of its manipulation of space and time, and it's on a much greater scale. It is more important than architecture, in the same way that our spinal column is more important than our earlobe.
Some people might say that urban farming will only ever be a hobby, but so much of human activity is a hobby that crosses over into the critical necessity of self-expression and survival. Termites and jungle ants are more impressive socially than us, but they don't have cute little gardens with lovely shrubbery.
Actually, some ants do practice agriculture...leaf-cutter ants harvest leaves, bring them back to their nests, and cultivate a fungus on the leaves. The fungus is their main food. But I get your point, which is that the ants probably don't put a lot of aesthetic thought into the arrangement of their leaf-farms. Probably.
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