DOI
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276414536624

Summary
This article envisions a future where society revitalizes itself by harnessing creativity to address both the need for creative dynamism and the need for physical energy. To achieve this, the author argues that we must embrace self-organizing properties in nature and society. The article critically evaluates backcasting as a methodology for visioning, arguing that it has limited potential for radical thinking unless it considers a break from class society, engages with grassroots struggles (particularly over land), and connects with the utopian socialist tradition. The article presents a case study on food production, starting with the physical parameters of combating entropy in soil loss and applying this to urban food-growing. The author proposes a threefold categorization of subsistence plots, urban forests, and ultra-high productivity sectors and emphasizes the emergent properties of a complex system characterized by the "free energy" of societal self-organization, drawing upon existing practices of "real utopias." Overall, the article emphasizes the importance of embracing self-organizing properties in nature and society to harness creativity and address both the need for creative dynamism and the need for physical energy. It advocates for a more radical approach to backcasting that engages with social struggles and connects with the utopian socialist tradition. The proposed case study on urban food-growing provides a concrete example of how self-organizing systems can address real-world challenges.

Relevance for Complex Systems Knowledge
The paper uses a complex system approach to analyze urban agriculture. The paper revises the backcasting method in a community-based approach and it uses this method for discussing the “free-energy” of social self-organization linked to three types of urban agriculture (subsistence plots, urban forest, and ultra-high productivity sector).
Using these examples, the paper outlines how different types of urban agriculture have several distinct reasons for existence and how they can mutually interact as part of a complex system whose emergent properties outstrip the sum of its parts.
The paper uses terms such as agro-ecology, permaculture, bio-dynamics, Low-External Input Sustainable Agriculture, the Fukuoka method, etc. not for contrasting with the modern agricultural method, but for explaining a complexity-respecting form of science within which traditional and modern elements can easily be integrated.

Point of Strength
The paper develops a reflection about urban agriculture and the complexity of its different forms and scopes. The paper reports some policy reflections concluding how societal restructuring co-evolves with the systems by which it is fed.
Food, both in a literal sense, provides the energy for people to function, and at the same time, acts as a catalyst for the development of human society’s energies of creativity and self-organization.
The paper shows as the different types of urban agriculture can be seen as “islands of unpredictability” that, by allowing space for unplanned and unstructured initiatives, create the terrain for new structures of cities as emergent properties both of society and nature.
This paper offers an interesting framework for evaluating the roles of urban agriculture in resilient cities.