Research & reports

Emmanuelle Faure, Corinne Luxembourg, Angélique Dupont · Presses universitaires du Septentrion eBooks · France (Gennevillois)

This chapter proposes understanding urban agriculture, specifically shared gardens in Gennevilliers, as part of a collective project to develop a more environmentally respectful, food-producing city. It also views urban agriculture as a potential lever for women's emancipation. The study will explore how urban agriculture can foster collective responsibility and become a concrete vector for changing relationships within the Gennevilliers context.

Peter Clark · · Europe

This chapter explores the historical trajectory of large urban parks and the broad pattern of urban green space from the pre-modern period to the present day in European cities. It notes that urban green spaces, including large urban parks, have faced significant financial, development, and management challenges in recent decades. However, these parks have also benefited from inter-city competition, as large green areas are crucial for a city's international identity and attractiveness.

Nurhan Koçan, Gökhan BALIK · Karadeniz Fen Bilimleri Dergisi · Turkey (Istanbul)

This study focuses on a landscape design project for the Historical Yedikule Gardens in Istanbul, an urban agriculture area with 1500 years of history. The project aimed to reorganize the farmland to enhance its contribution to the urban green space system, provide economic gain and hobby areas for citizens, and preserve its cultural past. Conducted under historical environmental protection and urban agriculture area regulation principles, the renewed area, with its historical, cultural, and economic values, is shown to contribute to both users and the city.

Friederike Reents · Publication Server of the Catholic University Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt) · Germany

This paper analyzes Thomas Kling’s poem „geschrebertes idyll, für mike feser“ as an "allotment garden idyll" within 'new nature poetry'. While Kling skillfully engages with the idyll genre and offers ecological, social, medial, and historical critique, the study finds that he presents a decidedly patriarchal self-image, which contemporary readers would likely find less acceptable.

Sandra Schwindenhammer, Denise Gonglach · Politics and Governance · Germany

This qualitative and participatory case study in Germany examined the governance implications of an emerging technology in urban agriculture that connects wastewater treatment and agricultural production for urban hydroponics. The analysis found that while this technology has the potential to facilitate SDG implementation, it simultaneously creates new sector interlinkages between water and food, leading to policy demands that necessitate more integrated policymaking.

Mariana Schmitz Gonçalves, Aguinaldo dos Santos · e-Revista LOGO · Netherlands (Rotterdam), Switzerland (Geneva)

This study aims to identify heuristics that allow for expanding social cohesion in urban agriculture initiatives. Two ex-post-facto case studies were conducted in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and Geneva, Switzerland. Another objective of the research is to reflect on the use of these heuristics in Service Design and Design for Social Innovation. The research's contribution lies in proposing meta-actions for converting the ten identified heuristics into Design actions.

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.

Arthur Feinberg, Elena Hooijschuur, Nicole Rogge, Amineh Ghorbani, Paulien Herder · Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation · Europe

This paper presents an agent-based model to explore conditions for sustained participation in urban community gardening projects in Europe, validated with data from Germany and the Netherlands. The study found that not all of Ostrom's Design Principles for collective action lead to higher participation; instead, participation depends on specific combinations of these principles. It also highlights that sanctioning mechanisms are not always beneficial and can be counter-productive in certain contexts for volunteer participation.

Martina Artmann, Katharina Sartison · RWTH Publications (RWTH Aachen) · Germany

This study investigated the implementation and impact potential of edible cities in three German case studies (Andernach, Haar, Munich) as part of a project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Edible cities are a concept that utilizes public spaces to provide free food and urban gardening opportunities for citizens.

Roberto Leggero, Mirella Montanari · University of Vienna · Italy

This investigation compared urban agriculture in the proto-city of Chieri and Novara in medieval Piedmont, Italy, finding that urban agriculture was influenced by the city's network and environmental relationship. Chieri's arid clay soils and water scarcity led to specialized wine production and in-city processing areas. Novara's Roman urban model and surrounding countryside facilitated vegetable gardens and peri-urban crops, demonstrating how different urban structures and territories generated diverse forms of urban agriculture.

Magdalena Szczepańska, Ewa Kacprzak, Barbara Maćkiewicz, Lidia Poniży · Moravian Geographical Reports · Germany; Poland

A comparative study analyzed the use and development of allotment gardens (AGs) in Westphalia and Lippe (Germany) and Wielkopolska (Poland). AGs in Westphalia and Lippe are accessible and harmoniously integrated into the landscape, while AGs in Wielkopolska are less accessible, prioritize internal users, and do not always blend with their surroundings. The considerable freedom enjoyed by Polish plot-holders leads to a gradual marginalization of edible-plant growing.

Enrico Gottero, Claudia Cassatella, Federica Larcher · Land · Italy (Turin)

This research developed a holistic method and map-based indices for interpreting and classifying peri-urban landscapes, focusing on open spaces to understand their complexity and identify homogeneous units. The method was applied to the peri-urban area of Turin, Italy, generating maps of spatial and functional classification at the landscape unit level, as well as a map of critical areas for improvement. Despite some minor limitations, the proposed method and tools appear to have a range of applications in the context of global challenges and from a landscape perspective.

Damian Maye, Paul Swagemakers, J.S.C. Wiskerke, Heidrun Moschitz, James Kirwan, Ingrid Jahrl · European Urban and Regional Studies · Europe

This study utilized the 'sustainable innovation journeys' concept to trace urban food initiatives in Rotterdam (Netherlands), Vigo (Spain), and Zurich (Switzerland) over a six-year period from 2013 to 2018. While micro-level innovation practices can induce sustainability shifts, particularly when aligned with policy interests, the study also observed potentially negative impacts due to a lack of alignment at the initiative or city-region levels.

Sam Ramsden · Local Environment · United Kingdom (England)

This article analyzes a charity-led community gardening project in a disadvantaged northern English community, which operated for three years with external funding. While it successfully engaged marginalized people, leading to increased skills, confidence, reduced isolation, and improved wellbeing, the project faced significant challenges requiring professional management. Crucially, after the funding ended, the community garden's future was fragile, and the long-term sustainability of outcomes for marginalized participants was vulnerable due to economic viability issues.

Viktoria Shchurova · Current problems of architecture and urban planning · Ukraine (Kiev)

This article highlights the problems of the negative impact of the agricultural sector integrated into the central and middle zones of large cities. A critical view was formulated on the practical implementation of scientific and legislative documents, using the example of the city of Kiev, and strategies for reorganization, restrictions, or a complete ban on estate development in urban environments were analyzed. Specific plots of estate development in Kiev were identified as requiring reconstruction or complete renovation in accordance with the city's strategic development concept.

Bianca Cavicchi, Atle Wehn Hegnes · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Europe

This paper explored elements of sociocultural adaptation (SCA) to innovation and climate change in European urban agriculture through a scoping-exploratory review of existing literature. The elements were categorized into three main categories. Key results indicate that socio-technical and socio-ecological innovations are critical to SCA, and some identified SCA elements are more central to the adaptation process than others.

İrem YURDAY, Ceren Yağcı, Fatih İŞCAN · Türkiye Arazi Yönetimi Dergisi · Turkey

This study explains the definitions, contributions, and benefits of urban agriculture and peri-urban agriculture. It notes that there is no clear policy framework for urban and peri-urban agriculture in Turkey, although urban interfaces are subject to planners and policymakers. The transformation of villages in big cities into communities under Law No. 6360 is presented from a utilitarian perspective. Urban agriculture has been adopted as a profitable production method in urban and peri-urban areas, and suggestions for its development in Turkey are provided.

Paul D. Jensen, Caroline Orfila · Food Security · United Kingdom

This case study used publicly available data to spatially analyze the urban food system of Leeds, UK, assessing its food security and resilience. The study found that while Leeds has a significant food production and provision system, it is not food secure in terms of providing sufficient energy or macronutrients, nor does it function equitably for all residents. Improving the system, including through urban farming, would require high investment, multi-sector cooperation, and strong governance.

Åsa Ahrland · University of Vienna · Europe

A historical study by the University of Vienna focused on Södermalm, a central part of Stockholm, Sweden, that for a long time combined industrial production, trade, craft and cultivation. It shows that agricultural fields there did not disappear until after World War II, challenging the common assumption that nineteenth-century rectilinear town planning was the main factor that ended urban agriculture. The study argues that the view of agriculture as incompatible with modern city life, together with the "green city" concept built on parks and other green spaces, was tied to interpretations of modernity in the Swedish welfare state's emphasis on rationality and efficiency, which produced a dichotomy between urbanity and rurality.

Ronan Crézé · Lectures · Europe

This is a review of a book by geographer Flaminia Paddeu that presents an immersion into urban agriculture through observation of multiple field experiences, described as contributing to the institutionalization of urban agricultural commons. The book's central subject is the land, understood both as soil (urban and agricultural) and as the site hosting ecosystems. While this subject has already been explored by sociologists, agronomists, and anthropologists, the author develops her own reflection on it.

Perla Zambrano-Prado, Francesco Orsini, Joan Rieradevall, Alejandro Josa, Xavier Gabarrell · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Europe

A study developing a framework and overview of key factors, policies, and barriers associated with rooftop urban agriculture (RUA) integration, based on stakeholder perspectives in four European cities—Barcelona, Berlin, Bologna, and Paris—via a two-phase workshop and stakeholder survey. While education, environmental, research, technological innovation, food production, and social factors were found to play an important role in implementing RUA, the cost of water and pollution emerged as major contextual factors constraining it. Policies related to food trade and urban planning were the most limiting to RUA development, and major architectural and technical barriers were identified around building height limits, historical buildings, lack of specific building codes, and roof accessibility, with high infrastructure costs and policies prohibiting RUA product sales acting as economic constraints. The cities differed significantly in the perceived effect of urban policy on RUA diffusion and the perceived relevance of economic and pollution factors, and the study concludes that wider dissemination of RUA information and new or revised regulations and building codes are needed.

Elia Apostolopoulou · · Europe (Greece)

Focusing on the two largest Greek cities, Athens and Thessaloniki, this study examines why urban community gardening surged after the 2008 financial crash, drawing on urban political ecology, radical social and urban geography, and qualitative social research. Greece is treated as a distinctive case: it saw this post-2008 increase in community gardening without having a prior long history of the practice, unlike parts of the Global South. The author concludes that the creation of community gardens is tied to rising inequality in European cities in the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, functioning both as an act of disobedience against the grabbing of public land and as a demand for reclaiming the urban commons.

Henriques, Carolina Neto, Costa Pinto, Teresa, Costa, Pedro, Marat-Mendes, Teresa · Portuguese National Funding Agency for Science, Research and Technology (RCAAP Project by FCT) · Europe

This paper analyzes local actors driving food-system transformation in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), Portugal. It compares a 2014 questionnaire survey of planning officials with the discourses of 80 public- and civil-society-sector initiatives surveyed in 2019, characterizing the initiatives, examining how they are shaping new food planning agendas in the LMA, and drawing on a framework from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the Resource Centres on Urban Agriculture and Food Security (RUAF) to identify lessons for future planning policy grounded in inter-municipal cooperation and continuous mutual learning.

Pascale Scheromm, Louis Cretin · Cahiers ESPI2R · Europe

Against the backdrop of the spread of shared gardens across European cities, this article focuses on their insertion into residential projects led by private property developers rather than municipalities, examining what issues this raises. It frames municipally driven shared gardens as well studied while noting that their development within private developers' residential programs has received less research attention.

Paola Branduini, Elena Colli · Landscape Research · Italy

A qualitative sociological analysis examined a policy tool used by public landowners in peri-urban Milan, Italy, who introduced new lease agreements transferring the maintenance costs of built rural heritage to tenants, aiming to avoid degradation and add value to unused buildings. Analyzing the tool through the lens of social justice and its impact on quality of life, the study found that the same policy tool produces very different outcomes for landscape preservation and quality of life depending on the implementation strategy used, and on the elements of social justice considered along with contextual and individual characteristics.