Research & reports
Peer-reviewed research and reports on community urban agriculture, food education, composting, welfare and more.
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Critical findings
78 results(1 / 4)
Opportunities and Constraints for the Development of CSA in Poland in the Context of Agricultural and Rural Transformation
2026Magdalena Raftowicz, Mirosław Struś · · Poland
This theoretical study analyzes the potentials and barriers to the development of Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) in Poland, drawing on existing research. It identifies key barriers to CSA development, including financial, legal, organizational, and social factors, which originate from both farmers and consumers. The ongoing land ownership concentration in Poland, fostering industrial agriculture, is contrary to sustainable development and EU agricultural policy, posing a significant barrier to CSA development, particularly for farmers.
Governance failureCSA & TeikeiEconomicsPolicyCommunityThe Role of CSA in Selected Theories of Rural Development
2026Magdalena Raftowicz, Mirosław Struś · · Europe
This chapter establishes a theoretical framework for examining the development of Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA). It argues that CSA aligns closely with sustainable development theory and should be regarded as an alternative to industrial agriculture. The analysis concludes that CSA constitutes a form of social and constructive innovation consistent with the sustainable development paradigm. However, the low level of social capital represents a key barrier to implementing the classical CSA model in Central and Eastern Europe.
Governance failureCSA & TeikeiEconomicsCommunityBiodiversity Monitoring in Food Forests
2026Jana Marion Böhme · PubData · Europe
This study investigated the current state and professionality of biodiversity monitoring in food forest projects and influencing social-ecological factors through an online survey and interviews with German and Dutch experts. It found heterogeneous characteristics and professionality levels in monitoring activities, primarily due to context factors like actors, governance systems, and socio-economic settings. The professionality of monitoring depended on volunteer and expert availability and funding, indicating a lack of integrated, standardized, and systematic monitoring concepts and institutionalization.
Governance failureBiodiversityCommunityPolicyEconomicsEl fenómeno de los huertos urbanos y sus posibilidades para el Trabajo Social Comunitario
2025Mercedes Muriel Sáiz · Dialnet (Universidad de la Rioja) · Spain (Madrid)
This article examines the phenomenon of urban gardens from a socio-community perspective, based on a methodology combining a literature review and participant observation in the community garden Ensancha el huerto (Alcorcón, Madrid). The analysis shows that urban gardens operate as micro-ecosystems of mutual support and learning, but the study also highlights risks associated with institutionalization, commodification, and legal insecurity surrounding such initiatives.
Governance failureCommunityFood educationPolicyWelfareNBS for social innovation
2025Mais Jafari, Rolf Morgenstern, Jonas Runte · · Germany
This chapter analyzed the co-creation pathway of Nature-based Solutions (NBS) in the Dortmund Living Lab, focusing on urban gardening, food forests, and biodiversity. It critically illustrated missing dimensions that hinder innovation, such as business opportunities, legal frameworks, and planning conditions. These identified gaps indicate challenges in governance and implementation for social innovation through NBS.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyBiodiversityClimate changeViolation of land use regulations for allotment gardens: The case of Warsaw, Poland
2025Grażyna Wiejak-Roy, Jaideep Roy, D. Andrew · Land Use Policy · Poland (Warsaw)
This study examined the market for allotment gardens in Warsaw, Poland, using a mixed-method approach including thematic archival analysis of regulations and hedonic regression modeling on posted offers. The findings indicate a poor transaction framework, pricing sensitive to legal and illegal private investments, and prevalent illegal rent-seeking on land. Additionally, increasing investment in allotment gardens was found to reduce biodiversity.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyEconomicsUnderstanding community supported agriculture through the intersection of practices and socio-technical Regimes
2025Mattia Andreola · Discover Sustainability · Italy (Trento)
This study conducted three years of ethnographic research, including participant observation, in-depth interviews, and quantitative data analysis, on "NaturalMente in Trentino," a CSA initiative in Trento, Italy. The research revealed multiple lock-in points, indicating that CSA constraints stem from organizational inefficiencies, deeply rooted cultural and behavioral habits such as the use of private gardens or a preference for supermarket convenience, and rigid institutional frameworks like cooperative dominance in the local agri-food regime.
Governance failureCSA & TeikeiCommunityEconomics“Planting flowers into potholes”: urban community gardens as symptoms of institutional shortfall?
2025Ágnes Gagyi · Local Environment · Europe
This paper investigated urban gardening in an East European capital, focusing on institutional resources. The study found a clear relationship between a shortfall of institutional resources and the limited, conflictual promotion of urban gardens as sustainability tools. It argues that gardens' contradictions stem from the privatization of public functions, which has depleted institutions capable of implementing gardens as sustainability tools, instead outsourcing costs to garden communities.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyClimate changeTransformar a partir dos interstícios: hortas urbanas comunitárias face à crise ecossocial
2025Sara Sama Acedo, David Berná Serna, Patricia Homs Ramírez de la Piscina · Scientific Repository of Open Access of Portugal (RCAAP) · Spain (Madrid)
A study analyzed the challenge faced by community urban gardens in Madrid, Spain, in remaining transformative spaces amidst an ecossocial crisis. These gardens are initiatives situated between community and public institutional management, with their expansion and institutionalization involving practices and relationships among diverse agents. The study points out the difficulty for these gardens to maintain their transformative role—updating community ties, reciprocity, and mutual care, and reformulating relationships with "nature" in the city and food supply—without being absorbed by market logics or marginalized into welfare or community volunteering spaces.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyFood sovereignty & justiceClaiming space
2025Kirsty Lohman, Ruth Pearce · Community Development Journal · United Kingdom (Durham)
This article describes a community garden in Durham, United Kingdom, maintained by volunteers working to retain common access to green space. The garden is located on a disused bowling green, against a backdrop of a struggle over land, ownership, and community use. The council had reportedly failed to maintain the land for many years, and much of the surrounding area is owned by Durham University. The community association aims to obtain control of the land through an adverse possession claim to prevent it from being sold off by the council.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyTHE WILD IN THE CITY: DIFFERENT CONCEPTS AND THEIR ROLE IN THE CONSTRUCTION OF URBAN COMMUNITY GARDENS OF GOUTTE D'OR DISTRICT OF PARIS.
2025Marina Abrão Ballak Dias · Revista Andaluza de Antropología · France (Paris)
This article explored how different conceptions of human-nature relationships shaped practices in two community gardens in Paris's Goutte d’Or neighborhood. Conceptions grounded in a human–nature divide prevailed, leading to a conservationist approach. Practices stemming from this perspective were found to be in constant tension with garden goals like increasing urban biodiversity and human socialization.
Governance failureCommunityBiodiversityPolicyTransformando desde los intersticios: huertos urbanos comunitarios ante la crisis ecosocial
2025Sara Sama Acedo, David Berná Serna, Patricia Homs Ramírez de la Piscina · Etnografica · Spain (Madrid)
This paper analyzes the case of community urban gardens in Madrid integrated into the Municipal Program of Community Urban Gardens. These initiatives are situated in the interstices between community management and public institutional management, generating new demands on the management of urban green commons and enabling forms of shared governance. The study reveals that these gardens face the challenge of maintaining themselves as transformative spaces without being absorbed by commercial logics or marginalized into welfare-oriented or community volunteer spaces.
Governance failureCommunityFood sovereignty & justicePolicySlippery pathways to socio-ecological utopias of community gardening: examples from Poland
2025Dorota Rancew-Sikora, Anna Horolets, Joanna Krukowska · Environmental Sociology · Poland
This article investigates how community gardening ideals are materialized and abandoned, applying Hannah Arendt’s distinction between types of work. Based on empirical analysis of narratives and observations in 12 gardens across Poland, the research demonstrates obstacles to democratic sustainability transitions. It proposes a processual concept of "slippage" to understand mechanisms by which departures from ideals occur in community gardens.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyMotivations and barriers in Huddersfield’s community gardens: exploring experiential social capital and community resilience
2025Sara Mahdizadeh, Yun Gao · Local Environment · United Kingdom
This qualitative study, based on 16 semi-structured interviews, examined motivations and barriers to participation in community gardens in Huddersfield, UK. Key motivations included social interaction, mental well-being, and skill development. Reported barriers were declining volunteer numbers, physical workload, limited institutional support, and accessibility challenges.
Governance failureCommunityHealthPolicyWelfareSchool principals’ practices and their facing barriers to sustainable development in Turkish K12 schools
2024Neşe Börü · International Journal of Leadership in Education · Turkey
This case study investigated school principals' practices and barriers to sustainable development in Turkish K-12 schools under centralized management, using semi-structured interviews. The findings highlighted the need for leadership skills, collaboration with external bodies, public education, reward systems, and school budgets under a centralized management approach. The research identified that the centralized management system itself presents a barrier to sustainable development efforts in these schools.
Governance failureFood educationCommunityPolicyExploring relations between community gardens and cultural institutions in terms of diverse governance models: A case study of Warsaw and Poznań, Poland
2024Barbara Maćkiewicz, Paulina Jeziorek · Przegląd Geograficzny · Poland
A two-case study in Warsaw and Poznań, Poland, explored the relationship between community gardens and cultural institutions, identifying factors that promote and impede their functioning. The study found that these gardens are characterized by a changing governance model, shifting towards a top-down approach where community members lack influence on strategic decisions. The involvement of cultural institutions, while facilitating longevity, may simultaneously disempower the gardens' viability.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceCo-designing infrastructures
2024Sarah Bell, Charlotte Johnson, Tse‐Hui Teh, Kat Austen, Gemma Moore · · United Kingdom (London)
This chapter explores co-design in developing urban infrastructures, presenting a six-step "Bottom-Up Infrastructure" model. The method was applied to a rooftop garden on a London social-housing estate, intended to function as drainage infrastructure. The case study revealed the potential for co-design, but also highlighted significant constraints on implementation in cities where communities possess limited power and resources.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyUrban–rural linkageFostering Citizen-Led Projects Through Multi-level Engagement in Wildemanbuurt, Amsterdam
2024Diana Krabbendam, Emiel Wolf, Bernie Deekens, Rosalie Bak, Hans Krikke · SpringerBriefs in applied sciences and technology · Netherlands (Amsterdam)
This chapter outlined activities for citizen-led projects in the Wildeman neighborhood in Amsterdam. The main challenges identified were a lack of trust and community feeling among inhabitants, a lack of involvement and ownership in neighborhood developments, and fragmented existing community activities and services.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyFood educationOrganic cycleUsing visual methods to map green infrastructure for a sustainable food economy in Letchworth Garden City
2024Amélie André · · United Kingdom
This case study of Letchworth Garden City examined the interplay between the town's layout, social practices, and governance supporting a local sustainable food economy. Food mapping and an ethnographical approach showed how Letchworth's masterplan provides a backbone for alternative food infrastructure, though the edible landscape is not always visible or effective for residents. Discussions with experts also pointed to a gap in coordination among key local stakeholders, which would be beneficial for improving the local urban food strategy.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyEconomicsFood sovereignty & justiceErnährungsrat, Essbare Stadt, Gemeinschaftsgärten: Innere und äußere Logiken und Widersprüche der sozialökologischen Transformation durch Urban Gardening am Beispiel Köln
2024Alexander Follmann, Dorothea Hohengarten · transcript Verlag eBooks · Germany (Cologne)
This publication, titled "Ernährungsrat, Essbare Stadt, Gemeinschaftsgärten: Innere und äußere Logiken und Widersprüche der sozialökologischen Transformation durch Urban Gardening am Beispiel Köln," discusses the internal and external logics and contradictions of socio-ecological transformation through urban gardening, using Cologne as an example. The abstract states that this work was published in "Unterwegs in die Stadt der Zukunft" on page 241.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyUrban–rural linkageConstrucción del sujeto colectivo: utilidades sociales de los huertos urbanos comunitarios
2024Lucas López Sosa, Gloria E. Casanova Molina · Revista Temas Sociológicos · Spain (Barcelona), Chile
This ethnographic study conducted in Barcelona and Santiago de Chile comparatively analyzed the social utilities, conflicts, and tensions faced in the daily management of urban community gardens. The study found significant symbolic and practical similarities between the gardens in both cities, despite geographical and cultural differences, highlighting their value as tools for urban and social regeneration.
Governance failureCommunityWelfareAlgorithmic Food Justice
2023Lara Houston, Sara Heitlinger, Ruth Catlow, Alex Taylor · Policy Press eBooks · United Kingdom (London)
Workshops critically experimented with the possibilities and challenges of blockchain as an infrastructure for food abundance and reparative work, using fictional scenarios set in a London transformed into a city farm by 2025. This experimentation suggested that blockchain presents challenges to such restorative and sustainable work. For participants, reparation involved working in the aftermath of social and environmental collapse to bring into being more-than-human-value systems that radically decentered human knowledge and experience.
Governance failureFood sovereignty & justiceCommunityDigital agricultureClimate change“I’m Happy for People to Collaborate, but I Don’t Want to Join in”. Addressing Failure in Community-supported Agriculture Networks
2023Bernd Bonfert · · United Kingdom; Germany
This article investigates "network failure" and collaboration barriers within Community-supported agriculture (CSA) networks in the UK and Germany, using qualitative case studies. The study found that CSA networks function effectively at national and local levels but experience relative failure at the regional level. Regular barriers to collaboration arise from capacity limitations, member differences, and competition, which the networks are actively trying to address.
Governance failureCSA & TeikeiCommunityEconomicsPolicyUnderstanding Social-Ecological Memory in Urban Agriculture: A Case Study from Istanbul
2023Susana Alves, Bahar Bașer Kalyoncuoğlu · Ecopsychology · Turkey (Istanbul)
This study explored the socio-ecological potential of urban agriculture in 10 family-related projects in Istanbul, where Bostans (historical urban vegetable gardens) are culturally significant. Despite their importance and UNESCO recognition, the planning and management of bostans have been hampered by rapid urbanization and a lack of integrative policies. Data from interviews, observations, and fieldwork highlighted the role of kinship in knowledge transfer and how farmers base activities on past-present affordances and future expectations.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyUrban–rural linkageFood sovereignty & justiceGuerrilla gardening as normalised law-breaking: Challenges to land ownership and aesthetic order
2022Andrew Millie · Crime Media Culture An International Journal · United Kingdom
This article considered guerrilla gardening, which involves taking on other people’s land without permission. A qualitative study of guerrilla gardeners from the North West of England found that guerrilla gardening is a normalised form of law-breaking. Despite not necessarily being to everyone’s taste and gardeners having an autocratic view of property, it is broadly accepted and welcomed, even by those who enforce the law.
Governance failureCommunityPolicyDIY