1) Introduction

Most contemporary cities are threatened by urban development, decreasing the environmental quality and fragmenting natural and agricultural landscapes (La Rosa et al., 2014). Non-urbanised areas are therefore decreasing. Urban agriculture provides many environmental, economic as well as social benefits. Agriculture can be considered as the pivot around which to make the new urban-rural relationships revolve (Diamantini, 2014). The integration between urban processes and natural processes through the promotion of urban agriculture can help to achieve more sustainable cities.

The study area is the district of Innsbruck in Austria. Innsbruck is located in the region of Tyrol in the Alps, and the total district covers an area of 2094,17 km². It is composed of two distinct administrative entities: Innsbruck, consisting of the city-center and covering an area 104,8 km², and Innsbruck-Land, which has an area of 1989,4 km² and is composed of 65 municipalities. Even if Alpine environments aren't very favourable to high population concentrations, Innsbruck in Austria is sometimes popularly qualified as the capital of the Alps. It is one of the biggest cities in the Alps, with 126 965 inhabitants in 2015 (for the center), which is equal 478 % of the 1869-population (Amt der Tiroler Landesregierung Landesstatistik (1), 2015). In the surrounding region (Innsbruck-Land), there are 172 041 additional inhabitants (Amt der Tiroler Landesregierung Landesstatistik (2), 2015)

Over the last decades, the regions of the Alps also encountered a multiplication of conflicts over land use, in particular between building development and the continuation of farming practices (Diamantini, 2014). Therefore, Innsbruck is also a place where urban agriculture can make a significant contribution to defining the landscape of the alpine valley floors, together with the high mountains and extensive forested areas. In this context, agriculture can be accompanied by tourism activities in the form of farm holidays or simply the sale of specialised products.

Geographers thus have to role to define the best suited areas to a land use change towards new forms of urban agriculture. To do so, a GIS-based multi-criteria suitability model will be created to identify the best areas where these new implementations could be done. The model was inspired by the work of La Rosa et al. in 2014 on the city of Catania in Sicily. The study identified 3 categories of urban agriculture: urban farms, allotment gardens and agricultural parks. Only the possible implementation of the two first categories, which are the smallest and the most related to the definition of "urban agriculture", will be done in this analysis.