Research & reports

Daniel Maxwell, Samuel Zziwa · Ecology of Food and Nutrition · Uganda (Kampala)

This study examines urban agriculture in Kampala, Uganda, as an adaptive response to economic hardships. It identifies significant constraints, including institutional obstacles to accessing underutilized urban land, municipal bylaws that suppress urban agriculture, and urban officials' indifferent to hostile views. The study found that these bylaws and views are based on misleading or false generalizations about urban agriculture.

Lee M · PubMed · Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, urban agriculture faces significant challenges due to government disapproval of public land use for farming and difficulty in obtaining credit. A 1983 survey in Addis Ababa found that 17% of 1352 households produced their own food on less than 25 sq. meters, with 90% of non-farmers citing lack of land. Despite urban agricultural cooperatives demonstrating 70% higher member income, their lack of government legalization prevents access to loans for productivity improvement.

Johan Pottier · Africa · Rwanda

This article explores the themes of knowledge, ignorance, and power in the context of a Rwandan development project, demonstrating how ignorance is generated through agricultural extension. It argues that agronomic services rely on power structures reminiscent of social inequality, and assesses whether the project-induced creation of ignorance leads to the displacement of local knowledge and the adoption of new methods.

Michael S. Jamison · Sociological Quarterly · Global

This study assesses the organizational cultures of collectives and bureaucracies within the urban gardening movement, finding serious underlying differences despite government assistance. Although government agencies provided resources and established projects, collectives and bureaucracies interpreted the urban gardening experience differently. This divergence in understanding the benefits and structuring the experience reveals a source of potential bureaucratic/collectivist conflict.

Bundesverfassungsgericht · Bundesverfassungsgericht (DFR, Universität Bern) · Germany

The First Senate judgment of the Federal Constitutional Court of 12 June 1979 (docket 1 BvL 19/76). It held that the combination of a blanket bar on termination, narrowly enumerated grounds, mandatory administrative approval and price control under the 1944 protection ordinance and the 1969 amending act was incompatible with the property guarantee of Article 14 of the Basic Law as it applied to private landlords. Section 1(3) of the 1944 ordinance and section 2(2) of the 1969 act were declared void for breaching rule-of-law principles. The court reasoned that allotments had shifted from subsistence necessity to recreational use, weakening the social justification for restrictions of that breadth.

Natalia Przesmycka, Rafał Strojny · Teka Komisji Architektury Urbanistyki i Studiów Krajobrazowych · Poland (Lublin)

This article examines allotment gardens in downtown Lublin, Poland, from a historical, architectural, and landscape perspective, focusing on the oldest garden, "Nasza Zdobycz nad Bystrzycą." It identifies that city-center allotment gardens are at risk from commercial development and discusses the increasing alienation of owners and progressing devastation of these areas. The study also attempts to explain these issues and suggests design applications for revitalization.