Farm in the city could be supermarket of the future

(CNN) -- Big cities are rarely home to thriving farmlands, but a group of Dutch architects hope to change that with the "Park Supermarket" -- an urban farming project that will attempt to grow and sell all the food of a modern supermarket in one place.

The firm behind the proposal, Rotterdam-based Van Bergen Kolpa Architects, intends to produce everything from risotto rice, to kiwis to Tilapia fish all on one 4,000-acre plot of disused land in Randstad, Holland's largest metropolitan area.

In defiance of the country's moderate climate, the architects say they have devised a system to control the park's outdoor environment, using old and new farming technologies to simulate Mediterranean and tropical climates in an ecologically sustainable way.

The land, which had been earmarked for a large block of business developments before the global recession, cuts across the city fringes of Rotterdam and The Hague, serving a potential customer-base of over one million people, according to Van Bergen Kolpa Architects.