Research & reports

J. Meyer, Markus Hassler · Sustainability · Germany

A qualitative study applied the "leverage points" concept, which holds that rethinking how knowledge is produced and used within systems is a key lever for transformation toward sustainability, to community-supported agriculture (CSA), an application not previously made. Semi-structured interviews were conducted at 22 CSA farms in Germany to gather detailed insight into the production and flow of knowledge among stakeholders and to analyze the degree to which these CSAs hold potential to leverage transformational change toward sustainability. The data indicate that CSAs bear substantial potential to leverage sustainability transformation with regard to rethinking agriculture, with a highly cooperative, participatory and transparent structure identified as the characteristic that allows the creation and exchange of information to flourish.

Lara Houston, Sara Heitlinger, Ruth Catlow, Alex Taylor · Bristol University Press eBooks · United Kingdom

This piece asks under what technoscientific conditions food scarcity might be understood as contingent on heterogeneous actors, and how the possibility of food abundance might be approached as a reparative project revaluing those manifold relations, framing blockchain as an infrastructure offering both productive imaginaries and challenges to such work. A series of workshops critically experimented with these possibilities and challenges, working with diverse participants — community growers, organizers, artists and technologists — who used playful methods to act out fictional scenarios set in 2025, a speculative future in which all of London had been transformed into a city farm. For the organizations and participants involved, reparation meant 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.

J.E. Jansma, Sigrid Wertheim‐Heck · Environment and Planning B Urban Analytics and City Science · Netherlands

This study examined Oosterwold, a peri-urban area of Almere, Netherlands, where a top-down policy goal of producing 10% of future urban food needs was delegated to residents' self-organisation under a rule requiring 51% of each plot to be allocated to urban agriculture. Using a social practice theory-informed analysis combining an online survey (n=111) with an analysis of aerial photographs (n=199), the study found that it takes residents time to adopt urban agriculture as a substantial practice within their heterogeneous lifestyles, and that a bottom-up, self-organised approach does not mean planning and policy can adopt a laissez-faire stance — a balance among policy goals, planning instruments, and practitioners' needs is required.

Laura van Oers, Giuseppe Feola, Hens Runhaar, Ellen H.M. Moors · Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions · Europe

This study qualitatively documents the conversion to a solidarity payment system at two Dutch community-supported agriculture (CSA) farms, combining conceptualizations of "organizational unlearning" from organization, business, and management theory with "pedagogical unlearning" drawn from postcolonial and feminist approaches to education, to build a fuller understanding of unlearning in sustainability transitions. The solidarity payment system increases CSA access for low-income members and fosters solidarity with farmers to secure fairer income. The results indicate a generative function of unlearning during processes of change, along with the strategic and pedagogical relevance of unlearning in this specific case.

D Kozáková, M. Jebavý, M. Kunt, K. Čechová · Scientia Agriculturae Bohemica · Europe

A study in Prague, Czech Republic (Scientia Agriculturae Bohemica, 2023) tested bulbous plant species for suitability in vertical and rooftop gardens under a temperate climate, recording bloom timing, duration, and resilience by cardinal direction across multiple years. Narcissus performed best in the south-facing section of the vertical garden and was found most suitable for both garden types; Scilla siberica was the worst choice for south-facing gardens in bloom length and quantity of flowering plants; Muscari armeniacum showed balanced bloom results across all cardinal directions; Galanthus woronowii did not show promise for either garden type; and Crocus 'King of Striped' was found unsuitable for vertical gardens.

SUEDANUR ÖZDEN, ESRA ARSLANTÜRK, MEHMET SENEM, İmdat As · Architecture and Planning Journal (APJ) · Europe

Focused on a planned future city for 50,000 residents on the European side of Istanbul, Turkey, this study (2023, Europe) explores a virtual reality (VR) gaming environment that lets citizens experience smart-city topics including innovative mobility approaches, drone delivery, and urban farming. It frames VR as offering a testing ground for ideas, performance simulation, and crowdsourcing input before a city is physically built, with gamification intended to incentivize citizen participation in the design process and generate a feedback loop for shaping the future city. Citizens can experience the city design through four circulation modes — walking, biking, driving, and flying — within the VR environment, and earn points by engaging with smart-city topics such as urban farming, solar energy use, and carbon neutrality. The project comprises three phases — an immersive head-mounted-display VR version of the city, edutainment/gamification, and integration into Meta's multi-user space — and the paper presents early findings, the methods and tools explored, and a discussion of VR's utility in architecture and urban planning design processes.

Nancy Harlet Esquivel-Marín, Leticia Myriam Sagarnaga Villegas, Octavio T. Barrera-Perales, Juan Antonio Lugo Machado, José María Salas González · Acta Universitatis Sapientiae Agriculture and Environment · Europe

This bibliometric review analyzes the systemic structure of multifunctional agriculture (MFA) and its relationship to sustainability, based on a sample of 432 documents published on the Web of Science platform. Using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer to map scientific collaboration networks, the review identified the authors, journals, and countries shaping the current knowledge structure and four thematic clusters: (a) MFA and sustainability, (b) ecosystem services and biodiversity, (c) European public policies, and (d) governance and urban agriculture. It concludes that, despite an increase in publication rates, research remains concentrated in Europe with few collaborative networks across disciplines, indicating that SDG 17 (partnerships) is not being achieved.

G. C. Moore Smith, Gilda Berruti · · Italy

This chapter explores Italian community gardens and the multiple policy frameworks that govern these activities, framing urban and peri-urban horticulture as part of a long tradition carrying social, environmental, and health benefits. It states that the drive for locally produced food is part of a recurring theme in public discussion; while few advocate national self-sufficiency, the widespread presence of locally based civic horticulture is said to raise awareness of food-production factors and to have a beneficial impact on patterns of food consumption and procurement. The chapter presents results of an investigation carried out in various parts of the country — Turin, Venice, Bologna, Siena, Rome, and Palermo — and also explores the special case of urban horticulture in greater Naples.

Ada Górna · Prace i Studia Geograficzne · Europe

A discussion piece examines vineyards as a specific form of urban agriculture, focusing on their spatial and functional dimensions through a case study of Vienna. Drawing on data from the Austrian Wine Marketing Board and field observations conducted in April 2022, it analyzes Vienna — described as "the king of urban viticulture" — to determine the spatial distribution of vineyards within the city, their production structure, and the functions they perform. It concludes that viticulture and winemaking in Vienna display a multifunctionality that combines production with recreational, tourist, landscape and cultural functions, which contributes to the preservation of vineyards within the city's space.

Anni Turunen, Riikka Aro, Suvi Huttunen · Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics · Europe

A qualitative content analysis of semi-structured interviews, observation and visual material from a citizen-led Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) group in Finland examined the role of materiality in constituting food citizenship. It found that materialities such as the field, time and body play a central role in CSA activities, and concluded that food citizenship should be understood not as an individual human trait but as a collective, active form of doing produced through intra-action with material-discursive arrangements.

Caroline Verfuerth, Angelina Sanderson Bellamy, Barbora Adlerová, Amy Dutton · Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · United Kingdom

Failures of the current food system are described as sitting at the core of multiple overlapping crises, shaping both consumption choices and food production, with low-income households disproportionately affected—their food security and access to healthy, sustainable food impacted as a result. Community-supported agriculture (CSA) is framed as a bottom-up response toward agri-food system transformation, an alternative food system built on locally sold, agroecologically grown food rooted in social values, and, alongside other food citizenship movements and alternative food networks (AFNs), driven by a vision of a democratic, socially and economically just, environmentally sustainable food system. Yet low-income households are underrepresented in the CSA community. This paper reports findings from a co-produced intervention between the research team, four CSA farms in Wales, United Kingdom, and two food aid partners, seeking ways to improve CSA membership accessibility for food-insecure households: 38 households received a weekly vegetable bag for two to four months, and 16 household members were interviewed at the project's start and at the end of the harvest season. Using a food well-being framework, the study found that CSA membership holistically improved food well-being by strengthening producer-consumer relationships, increasing availability of healthy foods, helping people care for their own and their families' well-being, and building place-based food capability and literacy—results the authors use to support calls for prioritizing food well-being interventions to benefit financially excluded, food-insecure households within localized AFNs.

Veronica Sebald, Julia M. Schmack, Monika Egerer · Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems · Germany

This study surveyed the occurrence of poisonous plant species in 30 urban community gardens across two German cities, Berlin and Munich, and examined concerns around poisonous and highly poisonous plants in urban garden settings. It found that plants producing substances toxic to humans occur in these gardens while also potentially holding ecosystem-functioning and biodiversity-conservation value, creating a trade-off with the ecosystem service of human health promotion, and concludes that poisonous plants should be carefully monitored and managed—depending on garden participants and the goals of the garden organization—to mitigate health risks while still supporting biodiversity conservation.

Fields in Trust · Fields in Trust · United Kingdom

The UK charity Fields in Trust protects parks and green spaces permanently for sport and recreation by entering a legally binding agreement with the landowner — a Deed of Dedication in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, or a Minute of Agreement in Scotland. The process runs through 10 steps, and the deed must be registered with the land registry within three months of signing. The charity states it has helped save almost 3,000 parks and green spaces to date.

· Wikipedia (Italian) · Italy

Cascina Chiesa Rossa is a farmhouse-and-church complex built between the 9th and 13th centuries, acquired by the City of Milan in 1960. Since 2009 it has operated as a public park including an orchard and wooded area, a bar, and a library, with a preservation committee founded in 1988 overseeing conservation and cultural activities. It is an example of a historic agricultural building repurposed as public civic space.

Josephine Rother · Stadt und Grün 11/2023 · Germany

An article that traces the history of German allotments through one site in the Linden district of Hannover. The Linden association first appears in lease records in 1909, had more than 1,000 members by 1925, and saw its first colony building erected in 1926. On the municipal side it notes the establishment of an office for allotment construction (Amtsstelle für den Kleingartenbau) in 1919 and the merging of the clubs into the Reichsverband der Kleingartenvereine in 1921. Plot numbers rose to 20,000 in the five years from 1927 to 1932 and peaked at 26,000 in 1935. In 1983 the land was secured by permanent-allotment designation; Hannover today has roughly 20,000 gardens on 1,048 hectares, about 5 per cent of the city's area, or one garden per 28 residents.

Eugenio-Gozalbo M., Ramos-Truchero G., Suárez-López R., Romanillos M.S.A., Rees S. · Education Sciences (MDPI), 12(3):168 · Europe

A study assessing a garden-based teaching unit on 'Food and Nutrition' against a traditional textbook-based unit. The garden-based sequence produced more comprehensive student understanding and better preparation for real-life dietary decisions, representing an educational improvement over traditional teaching.

Wood C. J., Barton J. L., Wicks C. L. · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(20):13166 · United Kingdom

A longitudinal study tracking 53 people with mental illness referred to the therapeutic community garden 'Growing Together' in Essex, UK, showing that participation improved wellbeing, reduced loneliness and raised life satisfaction. Benefits held even across the COVID-19 pandemic, supporting the value of green social prescribing.

Seitz B., Buchholz S., Kowarik I., Herrmann J., Neuerburg L., Wendler J., Winker L., Egerer M. · Urban Ecosystems, 25(3):927-939 · Germany (Berlin)

A survey of cultivated and spontaneously occurring wild plants in 18 community gardens across metropolitan Berlin, classifying each species as native or non-native. It found that gardens host many plant species — especially wild ones, including some endangered natives — regardless of surrounding urbanization, and that more cultivated species co-occur with more wild species (land sharing). The authors argue urban gardens can be sites of 'reconciliation ecology' that combine food production with conservation of native and wild flora.

Michael Carriere, David Schalliol · Journal of Urban History · United States (Milwaukee)

This historical essay documents the history of urban agriculture in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, complicating the "declensionist" narrative of the twentieth-century U.S. city. It argues that food production played a significant and often overlooked role in Milwaukee's economic, social, and spatial development, even during industrial expansion. The authors show that urban agriculture remained a viable tool for urban redevelopment, used by both public- and private-sector actors well into the twenty-first century.

· Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems · Germany (Upper Rhine)

A comparative case study of food policy councils in the Upper-Rhine region (including Germany), examining opportunities and challenges for food system sustainability and food democracy.

Dominici L., Comino E., Torpy F., Irga P. · Plants · Italy / Australia

An exploratory review of vertical greening system designs from scientific literature and community/commercial solutions, defining eight design models via six structural criteria and interviewing seven community garden groups to guide low-cost, small-scale DIY systems.

Wood C.J., Polley M., Barton J.L., Wicks C.L. · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · United Kingdom

Interviews with 13 stakeholders (social prescribing link workers and garden staff) and focus groups with 20 garden members examined how therapeutic community gardening supports mental health through nature engagement, hope, and social support, and identified barriers to referral and attendance.

Moore E.J., Thew M. · British Journal of Occupational Therapy · United Kingdom

Semi-structured online interviews with six care leavers aged 18-24 explored their experiences of a socially prescribed community allotment gardening group, yielding themes of social belonging, a safe space, achievement, and the facilitatory aspects of nature.

Adelina Court, Aileen Kelly, Michael Hardman · Cogent Social Sciences · United Kingdom (Greater Manchester)

This paper explores the need for innovation in urban green infrastructure, focusing on enabling urban food growing in cities. It reviews current policy tools and presents a case study of a multifunctional forest school in Salford, UK, which enables larger-scale farming in a deprived area. The study, conducted by a multidisciplinary team, also proposes a visual methodology framework for future replication.

Pénélope Duval, Claire Valiente Moro, Christina Aschan-Leygonie · Parasites & Vectors · France

A KAP survey conducted in community gardens in France showed that attitudes, more than knowledge, influence community gardeners' protective practices against the Asian tiger mosquito. All participating gardeners were concerned about the Asian tiger mosquito and motivated to incorporate control methods, but perceived mosquitoes as nuisances rather than disease vector species. This survey reveals a lack of knowledge and awareness of good practices for efficient control of the Asian tiger mosquito in green urban areas.