Beyond urban farm and community garden, a new typology of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Europe

Urban Farm DB summary

Proposes a new typology of the diverse forms of urban and peri-urban agriculture in Europe, moving beyond the conventional 'urban farm vs community garden' divide and offering a framework for situating citizen-driven initiatives.

Only numbers and their conditions are stored, as structured data — never the source's own sentences. Metric and condition names stay in English, as coded.

• 6

  typology type count(urban and peri urban agriculture)

  Policyn = 112

  region

  EU

  setting

  urban-and-peri-urban

  study design

  expert-interviews-and-online-survey

  interview n

  16

  interview countries

  11

  survey countries

  18

Direction of conclusions

Each author conclusion is recorded only as a coded direction per topic. Read the original for the conclusion itself.

• Policy and governanceSupportsWith caveats

Abstract Today, many cites in Europe have rediscovered urban and peri‐urban agriculture (UA) as a contributor to a more healthy and sustainable urban environment. However, UA has not yet unfolded its potential due to gaps in knowledge, expertise, and advocacy. A clear typology is instrumental in identifying, understanding, and acknowledging the potential of UA at different levels of policy making. Although a number of typologies are used in practice and in literature, an overarching typology that steps beyond the local and national perspective, and that includes promising innovations like vertical farming, is lacking. The aim of this paper is to offer such a typology of urban agriculture in Europe. Based on interviews with experts in the field representing 11 European countries ( n = 16) and an online survey on characteristics and dimensions of UA initiatives ( n = 112; representing 18 countries), our typology exists of six different UA types: (1) urban farm, (2) community park, (3) do‐it‐yourself garden/farm, (4) zero acreage farm, (5) social farm, and (6) community garden. Although this paper presents these types as distinctive entities, we stress that a typology is inevitably a simplification of reality, as in real‐life there is an overlap in the proposed types. Moreover, seeing that the field of modern UA is highly dynamic, the typology is only a snapshot of current‐day UA. That said, the suggested typology—along with the dimensions that characterize it—structures the apparent diversity of UA and is therefore instrumental as conversation starter of UA's potential in Europe.