Research & reports

Paris Pencharz, Peter H. Verburg, Pierre Chopin · Landscape and Urban Planning · Europe

This study investigated the conditions enabling urban agriculture (UA) at a 1 km² scale across 11 large European cities. The intercity model suggested that UA is more likely found in greener, central neighborhoods with lower property prices and lower proportions of locally born residents. However, there is not a consistent set of factors implying UA presence, suggesting other social and policy factors might be at play.

Mesut YILDIZ · Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems · Turkey (İzmir)

The Kadifekale Urban Orchard in İzmir, Turkey, was analyzed as a qualitative case study, showing that municipally supported urban agriculture functions as a relational public infrastructure reconfiguring women's labor, care responsibilities, solidarity networks, and public visibility. Based on one year of participant observation, in-depth interviews with 96 women, and focus group discussions, findings revealed women use the orchard to create space outside the home, build solidaristic ties, and increase public visibility. However, the case also revealed a persistent governance tension: municipal support is indispensable, yet women's influence over strategic decisions remains limited.

Ylva Wallinder · Local Environment · Europe

A study of Gothenburg, Sweden, examines the city council's shift over the past decade from associational (collective) urban gardening toward entrepreneurial gardening on municipal land, promoted through a scheme called "from garden box to hectare" that draws residents into entrepreneurial training while taking municipal gardening classes. Analyzing the consequences of this commodification of urban sustainability projects, the study finds that socio-economic resources and social relations both limit and strengthen entrepreneurial gardening practices and participants' quality of life, and that perceived competition among gardeners has turned urban gardening into a lonely, precarious, and individualized activity compared with the formalized associational gardening the municipality previously promoted. The finding points to a mismatch between the local government's sustainability visions and gardeners' actual experience.

Constantine Manolchev, David Watson, Laura A. Colombo, Patrick Elf, James Scott Vandeventer · · United Kingdom

A chapter examines the role of technology across the European 'agrifood' system, an umbrella term for the agriculture, horticulture, food, and drink sectors. Placing the dysfunctional consequences of making economic growth the driver of food-system organization in historical context, it shows through a case study of a daffodil farm in South West England that when technology is deployed as an engine of efficiency, unbridled growth, and profit maximization, it vastly improves productivity through worker quantification—time, motion, and output tracking—while transforming worker-nature relationships in exploitative ways. By contrast, when used to prioritize non-exploitative, collaborative relationships, technology can support sustainable well-being and ecological production, illustrated through three alternative food network cases: a UK community garden, a UK Community Supported Agriculture scheme, and a network of social agricultural cooperatives in Italy.

Lucia Di Paola · · Italy

This paper examines Milan's Porta Nuova re-urbanization project (2004-2015), which features Vertical Forest skyscrapers as symbols of urban greening. Activists and resident groups strongly opposed the project, criticizing the privatization of a public park and high rents, arguing it represents a top-down privatization leading to exclusion and gentrification. In response, these groups developed a public community garden in the same neighborhood as an alternative model for democratic horizontal urban greening.

Sara Giovansana, Giacomo Zanolin · Geography Notebooks · Germany (Berlin)

This study examines urban creativity in Berlin, focusing on urban gardens at Tempelhofer Feld and Prinzessinnengärten. Based on field research, it reflects on the potential of creative class initiatives in relation to gentrification. The work aims to outline the Berlin green experience as a sign of urban change.

Michael Hardman, Mags Adams, Melissa Barker, Luke Beesley · Manchester University Press eBooks · United Kingdom (Todmorden)

The Incredible Edible Todmorden (IET) movement in Todmorden, UK, was investigated using a qualitative approach. The scheme was found to have an overwhelmingly positive impact on the town, providing social, environmental, and economic benefits and contributing to a more just food movement through its "free for all" philosophy. However, negative aspects were also highlighted, including maintenance issues and a lack of perceived inclusivity in some parts.

Irene Håkansson · Journal of Cleaner Production · United Kingdom (London)

A quantitative study using data from nearly two thousand urban agriculture projects across metropolitan London investigated the geographically uneven distribution of urban sustainability experiments. Spatial statistical analyses indicated that gentrifying and income-deprived neighborhoods disproportionately often provide distinct urban milieux for initiatives to emerge, while already gentrified or otherwise advantaged urban neighborhoods have a disproportionately low number of projects.

Efrat Eizenberg, Simone Tappert, Nicola Thomas, Andis Zīlāns, Kristine Abolina, Theodosia Anthopoulou, Jevgenijs Duboks · · Europe

A book chapter examines the changes and challenges facing allotment gardens in European cities from the perspective of urban political economy, reading these new urban configurations within the macro-framework of capitalism and governability. It traces past and current processes of urban change through the economic, political and spatial lens of the "entrepreneurial city," discusses the impact of urban restructuring on allotment gardens' structure, operation and meaning, and states that political and spatial restructuring in the entrepreneurial city has been accompanied by a sharpening of social and economic inequalities within cities.

Clare Rishbeth · Journal of Urban Design · United Kingdom (London)

This paper investigates how urban greenspace can be designed and managed to reflect ethnic diversity and how this is perceived by users, using two case studies of community gardens in London. It found some differences in the response to the gardens by people from different ethnic backgrounds. The use of obvious symbolism was not necessarily a primary means of encouraging users from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, though appreciated for educational and design strengths. Concern is expressed about aspects of the physical and psychological containment of ethnic groups in fixed places and identities leading to the perpetuation of stereotypes.